This is how things work in a communist autocracy. State media reports that everything is fine and everyone in the government who is in contact with the dear leader has nothing but complete and utter respect for him. And then, occasionally, people in power just disappear. Sometimes there is a report that someone in a trusted position is under investigation for some vague crime. The bottom line in a one party state like China is that the leader is never wrong but sometimes the people around him fail to live up to his high expectations.
This week, China’s top military general got purged. His name is Zhang Youxia and there have been rumors circulating for months that he was at odds with Xi Jinping. A few days ago, police showed up at Zhang’s house.
On the evening of January 21, Zhang Youxia was surrounded by plainclothes police officers at the entrance of his Beijing residence. pic.twitter.com/IISoFdWNHQ
— Wanjun Xie 谢万军 (@xie_wanjun) January 24, 2026
Now word is coming out that he is under investigation.
China’s top general, second only to Xi Jinping, the nation’s leader, in the military command, has been put under investigation and accused of “grave violations of discipline and the law,” the Ministry of National Defense said on Saturday, the most stunning escalation yet in Mr. Xi’s purge of the People’s Liberation Army elite.
The general, Zhang Youxia, is a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the Communist Party body that controls China’s armed forces. Another member of the commission, Gen. Liu Zhenli, who leads the military’s Joint Staff Department, is also under investigation, the Defense Ministry said. Its announcement did not say what either general was alleged to have done wrong.
There’s a reason they haven’t said what these two general did wrong yet. They haven’t decided. The real answer is whatever works for a future show trial. Actually, it’s possible that there is some real corruption in the Chinese military. There is lots of money flowing in and it’s not that hard for the people in charge to redirect some of it. That certainly happened in Russia and could be the case here. In any case, once you’ve been purged there’s no coming back.
General Zhang’s downfall — few if any Chinese officials placed publicly under investigation are later declared innocent — is the most drastic step so far in Mr. Xi’s yearslong campaign to root out what he has described as corruption and disloyalty in the military’s senior ranks. It is all the more astonishing because General Zhang seemed to be a confidant of Mr. Xi, who has known him for decades.
“This move is unprecedented in the history of the Chinese military and represents the total annihilation of the high command,” Christopher K. Johnson, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who follows Chinese elite politics, said of the investigation of General Zhang.
General Zhang is not the first to go. Just a few months ago another senior general was purged. This story is from October.
China announced on Friday that one of its top military commanders had been dismissed and would be prosecuted on charges of corruption and abuse of power, confirming that the Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s extraordinary succession of purges in the People’s Liberation Army had reached its topmost ranks.
The commander, Gen. He Weidong, a member of the 24-member Politburo, the Chinese Communist Party’s second-highest tier, was also a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the party body that controls the armed forces. That put him third in China’s military hierarchy, after Mr. Xi and another commander.
The Ministry of National Defense said General He and eight other senior military officers had been expelled from the military and from the party. Some were already known or rumored to be under investigation, and General He stopped making public appearances earlier this year, an indication that he was probably in trouble.
The ministry gave no details about the misdeeds that General He and the other commanders were accused of. But it said the charges involved corruption.
At this point, there’s almost nothing left of China’s Central Military Commission. Xi has purged all but one of them. This makes you wonder if the whole military is corrupt or if Xi is just purging the people who don’t seem fanatically committed to his rule for life.
CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and CMC member Liu Zhenli officially purged.
The CMC has become more ridiculous from 1 chairman 1 vice chairman 2 members to 1 chairman 1 member 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/4Cw8n2glz1
— Taepodong (@stoa1984) January 24, 2026
If I were that last guy I’d be pretty nervous. And there’s really no telling how many lower ranked people are being purged at the same time. If Xi feels General Zhang is a threat then presumably any high ranking person loyal to Gen. Zhang is also a threat.
There’s also a practical problem here created by these purges. These guys were the actual commanders of the People’s Liberation Army. Gen. Zhang in particular was one of the last leaders who had any actual combat experience. With his departure Xi is going to have to promote inexperienced people to lead things.
“It’s a dilemma,” said Mr. Su, the Taiwan-based analyst. “He wants to first get rid of these so-called corrupt people, but for the P.L.A., if you clear out these high-level officers, that means a whole lot of experience is gone.”
General Zhang was among the few Chinese commanders with extensive experience in battle. The son of a general, he gained prominence as a frontline officer during China’s last war, a border conflict with Vietnam that began in 1979 and lasted for years. He rose to become head of the General Armaments Department, which is in charge of procuring weapons, and Mr. Xi promoted him to the Central Military Commission in 2017.
We’ve seen predictions for years now that Xi would attempt to seize Taiwan, probably within a few years. But this is a major setback for his plan. Can the PLA actually fight? Will there be anyone left who knows how to run an army? For all we know, these generals were purged for telling Xi Jinping no, as in ‘no, we’re not able to seize Taiwan right now.’ It will be interesting to see how Xi re-staffs his Central Military Commission.
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