President Xi Jinping’s long-running battle to bring China’s military under his absolute personal control has reached a tipping point.
On Jan. 24, China’s Ministry of National Defense confirmed that the nation’s highest-ranking general, Zhang Youxia, had been placed under investigation for a litany of alleged political misdeeds. It was Mr. Xi’s boldest move yet in his purge of the military, the most sweeping in Chinese Communist Party history.
The opacity of China’s political system has fueled speculation about factional warfare and reports that General Zhang is accused of receiving bribes for ministerial promotions and leaking nuclear secrets to the United States.
The real drivers are probably less sensational than that — and potentially more consequential for peace and stability in Asia.
The yearslong shake-up may suggest that the People’s Liberation Army is in turmoil, setting back Mr. Xi’s goal of “reunifying” Taiwan with mainland China.
But it is part of a long-term plan by the Chinese leader to make room for a new generation of more disciplined generals capable of mastering advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, drones, as well as space, undersea and cyber warfare. The ultimate aim is to create a military force capable of conquering Taiwan and prevailing in a potential confrontation with the United States.
There is no evidence that purged commanders have directly challenged these ambitions. But it has become increasingly apparent that Mr. Xi believes he needs to build a foundation of absolute ideological unity and personal loyalty for future battles, and he is drawing on the Maoist and Stalinist playbooks he absorbed in his youth.
The party has framed General Zhang’s removal as part of a mission to “remove rot and regenerate new flesh” and to achieve the “renewal and rebirth of the People’s Army.” This is coded language of great significance in the Chinese Communist Party, referring to the pivotal period when Mao Zedong’s battered Communist forces regrouped at Yan’an in north-central China in the late 1930s after a series of setbacks.
For Mr. Xi and his fellow party princelings — the children of revolutionaries — Yan’an is hallowed ground, where Mao rallied the Red Army and turned it into the disciplined fighting force that went on to defeat the Nationalist government of China and seize control of the country. It was also where Mao unleashed a campaign of political terror to eliminate rivals or those he considered ideologically unreliable for the challenges ahead.
General Zhang is not only a highly respected veteran who was second in command to Mr. Xi, he has long been considered one of Mr. Xi’s closest military advisers. Their fathers fought together in the revolution. If someone of General Zhang’s stature can be vilified as a source of “rot,” it underscores that the overhaul by Mr. Xi — arguably the most strategically patient, calculating and globally ambitious leader in the world today — is about something far larger than corruption or factional balance.
Mr. Xi, like Mao and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, has cast “removing rot” as a process of self-renewal, a continual effort to “detoxify and sterilize” the Communist Party to ensure regime survival.
Since 2022, Mr. Xi has removed five of the six generals in his Central Military Commission. As many as 34 of the 44 generals in the party’s Central Committee have been ousted or conspicuously missing from official appearances without explanation — a deeper purge than anything Mao ever conducted.
This unquestionably leaves the Chinese military weakened over the short term. Stalin culled close to 90 percent of his top generals during the Great Terror of 1937-38. The next year, when the Soviet army invaded Finland, it was badly mauled by much smaller Finnish forces.
But Mr. Xi apparently believes he can cultivate a new generation of leaders in short order for the world’s largest standing army. A devoted student of Soviet and Chinese Communist Party history, he knows that within just three years Stalin had reconstituted his top brass, led by Georgy Zhukov, who eventually turned back invading Nazi forces.
The government rhetoric about General Zhang’s dismissal has specifically dug into similar time frames. After the announcement was made, the P.L.A. Daily noted that at Yan’an the “virtuous cycle of ‘removing rot — regenerating flesh — winning battles’ enabled the army, in just three short years, to sweep away opposing forces, overthrow the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang (Nationalists), and usher in the birth of New China.”
Taken together, the pieces are now lining up in a way that could embolden Mr. Xi to escalate Chinese economic and military pressure on Taiwan in the next few years.
Taiwan will hold elections in January 2028. If Lai Ching-te, the current president, is re-elected, it will mark the fourth straight time that Taiwan voters have elected a candidate from the Democratic Progressive Party — which favors maintaining the democratically-ruled island’s de facto independence. This could be seen by Mr. Xi as further narrowing the path toward peaceful unification on Beijing’s terms. On the other hand, if Mr. Lai loses — recent polling suggests he might — it would hand the presidency to a party that is more open to closer ties with China.
President Trump’s actions may be inadvertently intensifying these dynamics.
While consistently antagonizing the allies that have helped keep Beijing’s geostrategic ambitions in check, Mr. Trump has shown little appetite for sustained confrontation with Beijing, appealing for summits and suing for peace in his trade war. It may be no mere coincidence that General Zhang’s downfall was announced just one day after the Trump administration released a new National Defense Strategy, which focuses on U.S. dominance of the Western Hemisphere while moving away from the longtime goal of countering China.
If Mr. Trump continues with an accommodative approach to China and further destabilizes the U.S.-anchored alliance systems, the strategic consequences two years from now could be profound.
With fewer constraints, both internal and external, Mr. Xi would be free to squeeze Taiwan even harder, backed by a regenerated Chinese military leadership that has been conditioned to execute — not question — his orders.
John Garnaut is a co-founder of Garnaut Global, a geopolitical risk advisory firm. He was a China correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and senior adviser to former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia, and is the author of “The Fall of the House of Bo.”
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