Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
This week, we’re taking an in-depth look into the purge of China’s top generals—and what this means for the future of Xi Jinping’s rule.
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
This week, we’re taking an in-depth look into the purge of China’s top generals—and what this means for the future of Xi Jinping’s rule.
Top Generals Targeted in Military Purge
The arrest of Zhang Youxia, China’s top general, along with fellow senior general Liu Zhenli, has sent shockwaves through the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Accused of “grave violations of discipline and the law,” Zhang is the most senior figure purged under Chinese President Xi Jinping—and by far the most consequential.
Until recently, Zhang was widely seen as one of Xi’s closest allies. Xi appointed him first-ranking vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) in 2022, effectively the highest operational military post, since Xi himself chairs the body. The two men also shared long personal ties: Their fathers worked together, and they have known each other since childhood.
Xi has purged numerous generals under the banner of anti-corruption, shrinking what is normally a seven-member CMC leadership group to just himself and Zhang Shengmin, a political commissar who led some of the previous investigations into other generals. But this purge is different from previous ones.
Typically, months pass between a major official’s disappearance and the announcement of the disciplinary, and later criminal, charges against them. Zhang and Liu did not appear at the opening ceremony of a study session for senior officials last Tuesday and were publicly denounced just four days later. The unusual speed here seems intended to anticipate and block any unrest within the military.
What prompted such a drastic step remains unclear. These processes are extremely opaque, leaks are rare, and any analyst, including myself, can offer only informed guesswork. Still, I’m skeptical of several explanations put forward thus far.
I highly doubt there was a dramatic armed standoff surrounding the arrests; the diaspora rumor mill routinely invents such stories.
Nor do I believe doctrinal disagreement drove the purge. Any genuine dispute over training or preparedness could have been resolved by pushing Zhang into retirement—an easier option, since Xi had already granted him an exception to serve past the usual retirement age.
I also doubt that Zhang passed nuclear secrets to the United States, as the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. This seems to be either a misunderstanding due to the second- or thirdhand nature of such inner circle reports or based on extremely weak evidence, such as discussing nuclear issues at official meetings with U.S. counterparts.
The most plausible explanation continues to be fallout from Xi’s investigation into the state of readiness and corruption within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This uncovered two major problems—rampant corruption within the PLA Rocket Force and a broader system of graft tied to promotions and personnel selection. The issues appear to have genuinely shocked Xi, who believed his mid-2010s purges had cleaned up the force.
This was an issue not just of reform but of national security; the CIA paid the “promotion fees” of its Chinese assets from around 2007 to 2012—necessary bribes that allowed officers to rise in the military hierarchy—before being discovered by Chinese intelligence. Official editorials on the latest purge lend support to this theory, emphasizing the themes of entrenched corruption and the absolute necessity of party dominance over the army.
As disciplinary investigations took down general after general, the remaining leaders found themselves on increasingly unstable footing. I suspect that a desperate Zhang and Liu started asserting their own power over the army or even contemplated moving against Xi. This reinforced Xi’s fears, convincing him that decisive action was necessary for both his own survival and the PLA’s future. Last year’s diaspora rumors that Zhang had secretly toppled Xi, although based on very little, may not have helped.
More purges are likely to follow, which does not bode well for China’s military readiness. History shows that purges leave armies ill-prepared for war. And though Zhang is not a military mastermind, he was a competent administrator and politician. Most importantly, he was one of the vanishingly few PLA members to have seen combat and perhaps the last serving member with battlefield command experience in China’s last war, its 1979 invasion of Vietnam.
That’s a real loss, but the bigger problem is the culture that purges are creating within the military. Under Xi, the mediocre and incompetent have risen across Chinese state institutions, while the talented and assertive have either had their careers stymied or fled to the private sector. Anti-corruption investigations worsen that because the only way to defend yourself, in a system where everyone is implicated, is to attack others for disloyalty.
The good news is that these developments make Chinese military adventurism less likely, including an invasion of Taiwan. For Xi to trust the PLA, it would require not only a complete change of personnel but confidence that corruption-induced logistical issues had truly been resolved.
To be sure, a dulled officer corps might produce yes-men, but there is little indication that Xi has succumbed to the kind of delusional nationalism that Russian President Vladimir Putin experienced before invading Ukraine. On Taiwan, Xi’s rhetoric of unstoppable reunification remains largely unchanged from decades of similar speech by his predecessors.
As for Xi himself, the purges of men he once appointed damages his credibility but also speaks to his power. In the long run, however, he is already seen by many Chinese as a failed leader. He will be saddled with the baggage of zero-COVID policies, the collapse of the real estate sector, economic stagnation, and growing social discontent for the foreseeable future.
After Zhang’s fall, no officer can feel safe—especially if investigations into the promotion system continue, implicating nearly everyone who advanced under disgraced leaders. As exiled Chinese analyst Deng Yuwen notes, by breaking the unspoken rules of who can be targeted within the party, Xi has created even more dysfunctional institutions.
He may also have created the conditions for a future coup. However, pervasive fear, mutual distrust, and electronic surveillance make the coordination needed extraordinarily difficult. Any serious move would likely require Xi to appear visibly weak, such as through severe illness.
For now, he remains China’s sole strongman.
