Xi’s purge of China’s military brings down its top general
Chris Buckley
Taipei: The Ministry of National Defense said the top general in China’s military command, second only to the country’s leader Xi Jinping, was under investigation and accused of “serious violations of discipline and law”; This is the most dramatic escalation yet in Xi’s purge of the People’s Liberation Army elite.
General Zhang Youxia is vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the Communist Party body that controls China’s armed forces. The Defense Ministry said another member of the commission, General Liu Zhenli, who heads the military’s Joint Staff, was also under investigation. The announcement did not allege what either general did wrong.
Zhang’s downfall is the harshest step so far in Xi’s years-long campaign to root out what he describes as corruption and disloyalty in the military’s upper echelons. This is all the more surprising because Zhang appeared to be a confidant of Xi, who had known him for decades.
Christopher K. Johnson, a former CIA analyst who follows China’s elite politics, said of Zhang’s investigation: “This action is unprecedented in the history of the Chinese military and represents the complete destruction of the high command.”
With the two generals effectively dismissed, the Central Military Commission is left with only two members: President Xi and General Zhang Shengmin, who oversaw Xi’s military purges. Xi has dismissed all but one of the six generals he appointed to the commission in 2022.
Johnson, president of China Strategies Group, a consulting firm, said Xi appears to have concluded that the problems in the military are so deep that he cannot trust the top command to improve itself and must look to a new crop of rising officers.
“The purge of even a childhood friend in Zhang Youxia shows that Xi’s anti-corruption zeal now has no limits,” Johnson said.
Zhang Youxia and Liu are the People’s Liberation Army’s two top commanders in practical operational roles, and removing them would leave a gap in experience, said Shanshan Mei, a political scientist at RAND, a research organization that studies China’s armed forces.
“There is currently no one with the highest level of operational experience or responsible for training and exercises,” Mei said. “This will be a very deep wound and there will probably be more to come.”
This article was first published on: New York Times.
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