The fall of the generals: China’s military purge

Not since the era of Mao Zedong has China seen “a purge of this magnitude”, said The Indian Express (Noida). On 24 January, Beijing announced that the nation’s highest-ranking general, Zhang Youxia, was being investigated for “suspected serious violations of discipline and law” – party-speak for corruption.

The move was extraordinary because Zhang, a Politburo member, had been one of Xi Jinping’s closest allies; both were “princelings” whose fathers were senior figures in the early Chinese Communist Party (CCP); they’ve known each other since childhood. Now, after the 75-year-old’s sudden fall from grace, China’s military hierarchy lies in tatters.

‘Paper tiger’

Zhang and Liu Zhenli, another top general also under investigation, are set to be removed from the Central Military Commission (CMC), the body that controls the two-million-strong People’s Liberation Army (PLA). As three other members have already been expelled, this would leave only two people on the CMC – Xi himself (the commander in chief), and Xi’s anti-corruption tsar.

The action against the top generals is a “desperate measure”, said Youlun Nie in Nikkei Asia (Tokyo). The most likely explanation lies in the “scandalous defects” that have been discovered in the PLA, which has long been plagued by corruption. Xi has spent hundreds of billions every year to create an army capable of “fighting and winning wars” – notably to conquer Taiwan and reunite it with mainland China, but graft has turned it into something of a “paper tiger”. The hi-tech arsenal of its elite “Rocket Force” has been beset with systemic technical failures: missile tanks filled with water rather than fuel, silo lids failing to open, preventing rockets from being launched. Xi’s fear is that his supposedly world-beating missiles “might turn out to be nothing more than expensive fireworks”.

Zhang and Liu’s defenestration is part of a wider pattern, says Chun Han Wong in The Wall Street Journal (New York). Since mid-2023, at least 50 senior officials in the military and the defence industry have been investigated in corruption probes. What’s even more startling is that one-fifth of all senior generals promoted by Xi have either been fired or accused of wrongdoing. Xi is “stripping down his military command and starting over”.

‘Frozen with fear’

The purges have led to “doubts about Beijing’s war-readiness”, said The Taipei Times. Xi’s “unprecedented reshaping of the PLA’s leadership”, doing away with generals like Zhang – a war hero who fought in the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 – means the top echelon is very short of much-needed combat experience. This could “weaken its capability to launch military aggression against Taiwan” in the short-term. But it doesn’t mean war is less likely, though: Xi will probably appoint replacements more willing to execute his military “blueprint”.

Officers promoted in place of the old guard could be “far less likely to question Xi’s authority”, said Karishma Vaswani on Bloomberg (New York). And they’ll be more inclined to tell the president what he wishes to hear about the military – instead of the truth.

“These arrests are political, first and foremost,” said Deng Yuwen in Foreign Policy (Washington DC). “Anti-corruption is just a cloak in which the politics are wrapped”, as Xi amasses yet more power. This is not to say that Zhang and Liu are innocent. Corruption is so endemic in one-party China that any official can be taken down. The problem is that the rules have changed, and now no one is safe. In the past, being a member of the Politburo or a “princeling” guaranteed you protection. That’s no longer enough – just look at Zhang, who’s now in custody.

Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has been running since 2012 and has investigated millions. CCP bureaucrats must be “frozen with fear”. No one will dare sign anything off, try to solve social problems, or launch reforms. The machine is “eating itself”. Who now will dare “to keep it moving forwards”?