Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has removed China’s most senior general and the chief of combat planning and operations amid allegations of corruption and “violation of party discipline.”
An editorial in the People’s Liberation Army Daily accuses the men of having “undermined Xi’s authority, abetted political and corruption problems that impaired the party’s leadership over the armed forces, and damaged efforts to develop combat effectiveness.” General Zhang Youxia, the senior of the two vice chairmen overseeing China’s approximate equivalent of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Military Commission, and a longtime Xi ally, was abruptly removed from his post Saturday and accused of unspecified corruption and, my favorite, “violations of party discipline.” Accompanying Zhang to a future career in making consumer electronics in a slave labor camp is General Liu Zhenli, chief of the Chinese military’s Joint Staff Department.
Zhang’s fall is particularly interesting as he should have been insulated from any purge.
Zhang, who is also a member of the party’s elite Politburo, has been a close ally of Xi. Both men are “princelings,” as the descendants of revolutionary elders and high-ranking party officials are known.
Zhang is the son of a Communist revolutionary who fought alongside Xi’s father during the Chinese civil war, which culminated in Mao Zedong’s forces seizing power in 1949. Zhang’s father later became a three-star general, while Xi’s father went on to hold senior roles in the party, government and legislature.
As we've noted here at RedState, Xi has been using real and perceived instances of "corruption" to completely gut the People's Liberation Army command structure; see Is the Chinese Military Crumbling Under Xi? It Seems Like It... – RedState. Just a note, the PLA is the analog of the U.S. Armed Forces. The People's Liberation Army encompasses not only the Ground Force but the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF), and People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).
I'm not a China expert, and Chinese domestic politics are fairly opaque to the outsider, but it is clear that all is not well within the Chinese defense establishment. Since taking power in 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has conducted the most extensive purge of the military establishment since the days of Mao Zedong. The purge has been particularly intense and unending since 2023. These actions are officially framed as efforts to root out corruption and eliminate those deemed insufficiently loyal to Xi or those blamed for hindering military modernization and combat readiness.
This is how the purges have evolved since Xi assumed power in 2012.
Xi didn't wait long to begin the purge. In 2016, he started with some of the Old Guard, including former CMC vice-chairs Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, along with dozens of senior generals. This was widely seen as Xi breaking up entrenched patronage networks from the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras.
If you thought it was safe to go outside, you were wrong. In 2023, Xi turned his attention to the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF), which oversees China's nuclear and conventional missile arsenal. In mid-2023, PLARF commander General Li Yuchao was removed, along with his deputy Liu Guangbin, a former deputy Zhang Zhenzhong, political commissar Xu Zhongbo, and several other deputies, amid allegations of corruption in equipment procurement and missile silo construction. The shake-up raised international concern about possible compromised readiness.
June 2024 brought the disappearance of two successive defense ministers: Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, both PLARF alumni, lasted only a few months. They were ousted and later expelled from the Communist Party for "serious violations of discipline and law."
14 out of 81 generals made by Xi since the Oct22 Party Congress are under arrest, 23 have simply disappeared. Now the Vice Chair of the Central Military Commission (the very top) Zhang Youxia & an aide are arrested. Corruption is improbable. So why ? Any Sinological theory ?
— Edward N Luttwak (@ELuttwak) January 24, 2026
The Central Military Commission has been gutted since the appointments made in October 2022, following the 20th National Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
This is the CMC right now. Photo courtesy of @stoa1984 pic.twitter.com/eWhN7Htp06
— Lyle Morris (@LyleJMorris) January 24, 2026
So what does all this mean?
The consensus seems to be that the prolonged purge of the PLA has probably made war over the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea less likely. This is a summary of most observers' opinions.
China’s Military Just Lost Its Last Real Generals and PLA"s Military Command Is Imploding in Real Time.
— Ken Cao-The China Crash Chronicle (@Ken_LoveTW) January 24, 2026
How I Knew China’s Top General Was Finished — Before the CCP Admitted It. And Why the Taiwan Strait Just Got Safer.
Days ago, I asked a simple question: Where is Zhang… pic.twitter.com/wpGfyWckHQ
Anyone who believes the fall of General Zhang accelerates a war over Taiwan misunderstands the basic logic: in China, the military exists first and foremost as a Party instrument for internal control, not as a force aimed at external enemies.
— Henry Gao (@henrysgao) January 24, 2026
No one believes ridding the PLA of corruption is a real cause of action. China's real estate market, banking system, public works programs, and every other conceivable part of the government is as corrupt as a Somali day care conglomerate.
when military spending is in the 100s of bln USD, there will be rent seeking. As long as military performance improves, corruption should be ok for Xi but if Zhang was manipulating Xi to purge He’s faction and building a giant faction in the PLA, Xi may feel the need to purge
— Victor Shih (@vshih2) January 24, 2026
Plus, any military with the competence to challenge the U.S. in the Western Pacific is more of a threat to Xi than a wildly corrupt and ineffective military.
The purges have slowed weapons procurement, delayed promotions, disrupted command cohesion, and created uncertainty about the PLA's actual war-fighting capability despite massive budget increases. They reflect Xi's relentless drive for personal control over the military, but also reveal persistent corruption in defense contracting, factional intrigue, and perhaps doubts about loyalty as tensions rise over Taiwan and the South China Sea. In summary, though the military purges under Xi represent both a genuine clean-up of a historically corrupt system and a ruthless consolidation of absolute personal authority over China's armed forces, there is also an air of fear and frantic overreaction on Xi's part. This scale of a purge, with lack of party loyalty being frequently trotted out as a reason, doesn't paint a picture of Xi being firmly in control of the PLA or the PLA having a lot of interest in tangling with anything more substantial than the Philippines coast guard.
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