The Purge of Zhang Youxia: Reading China’s Army-Party Relations Through Tea Leaves

The publicized purge of Zhang Youxia, vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and General Liu Zhenli raises questions about China’s army-party relationships to the next level. There are now only two members left out of the seven nominated in 2022 at the CMCs, the PRC’s twin CCP and state institutions controlling the PLA: Xi Jinping himself and General Zhang Shengming.

Moreover, he was a concurrent vice-secretary of the CCP’s top Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC) and succeeded in October 2025, General He Weidong, the CMC’s other vice-chair, himself purged for corruption with a reported total of 200 high military officers.

The only precedent for this is the Cultural Revolution’s first phases. From 1966 until Marshall Lin Biao’s fall in 1971, the CMC mostly disappeared from sight and its actual membership was opaque, beyond Mao and Lin. It reconstituted slowly from 1972 onwards. Even then, formal memberships were not formally cancelled, although hardly spelled.

Never as extensive, this is far from the first instance of a purge by Xi at the top of the PLA. Two former vice-chairmen were purged in 2015 — with graphic details for General Guo Boxiong, such as truckloads of cash removed from his house. Two sitting defense ministers — a position that is in fact of a lower rank — have also fallen to accusations of corruption.

Corruption, of course, is both a real topic and a possible sideshow for political strife. That bifurcation is usually hard to assess in an opaque system where the rumor mill inside China, and overstretched by political opponents abroad, tend to interpret events as infighting among factions and signs of strong challenges to Xi Jinping’s power.

And we should not doubt the pervasive accusations of corruption — again levelled against Zhang Youxia — and its implications for personal loyalty, for several reasons. First, not only is standard corruption an enduring feature of China’s bureaucracy, and even more specifically the purchase of jobs and promotions has been endemic since the imperial era. In fact, today’s front page People’s Daily commentary almost makes that case: "A three-foot-thick layer of ice does not form in a single day, nor can such ice be removed overnight. The current concentration of corruption investigations does not mean that corruption is increasing, but rather that deeper layers are being unearthed". For movie buffs, just look for director Li Lianying’s The Last Eunuch (1991), portraying the doomed efforts by Empress Cixi’s faithful servant to stem defence procurement graft, including for relatives. The actual moral from the movie is that being disloyal to your own relatives makes you an outcast by society.

Even then, the case was likely very political — one sound bite was that he, in fact, was moderate enough in his bribe collection to create a binding network of solidarity among these underlings. In days not so old, one would call it an "anti-party clique". Certainly, much of the indictment being brought forward by PRC mouthpieces can be read as an extension of these corruption charges. With all members of the PLA’s CMC now purged for corruption except the one man named to fight it, we can be left in no doubt that corruption is nearly universal in the Chinese army.

But this goes one step further. The official accusation against Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli levels political charges alongside corruption itself. They "seriously trampled upon and undermined the chairman responsibility system of the Central Military Commission, severely encouraged and exacerbated political and (emphasis by this writer) corruption problems that weaken the Party’s absolute leadership over the military".

The transparency stops there. Claims of "political" or "ideological" rectification for the PLA are far from new. Even the accusation of undermining Xi’s authority is not entirely new: there have been recurring campaigns to remind the military that the Party commands the guns and that loyalty to Xi Jinping is the first prerequisite. Without more transparency, one must read tea leaves to guess what might be left out, and ascertain the consequences of what is a major political storm. We enter here a territory of conjecture.

First, the more extreme products of the rumor mill - necessarily abroad - are produced by Falun Gong, the sect that has never hesitated to distort facts to suit its own political tenets. Let’s not lose too much time there, as literally none of its many assertions are backed by facts. "Arrest" of the principals is likely, but under the usual guise of investigation. The notion of a trap set by Xi at a major Beijing hotel, and of a large firefight, has no evidence. Not a single known fact backs the notion that the PLA has the idea of a clever Xi feigning submission to this group, and suddenly striking back, has a good psychological foundation in Xi’s background of deception of friends and foes alike. Even more improbable is the claim that "Party elders" (Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao) would have conspired with Zhang to topple Xi. These are ghosts from the past, noted in fact for their indecisiveness on many hard power issues even when they were in office.

Finally, there is the bombshell dropped by the Wall Street Journal: Zhang would have leaked nuclear secrets to the United States, according to obviously unnamed Chinese sources on an "internal briefing". But Zhang’s few travels abroad only included Russia, Pakistan and Venezuela. During his whole tenure, he met one unique U.S. official and on the record: Jake Sullivan, the former NSC adviser in 2024 and in Beijing. It seems improbable - but not impossible, of course - that China and the United States would have shared some nuclear details for confidence-building. It is highly unlikely that even Zhang could have performed that independently. Control of any dealing with foreigners is central to the CCP’s modus operandi.

These allegations logically bifurcate towards two contradictory interpretations spreading across international social media: one is that Xi is now a naked and cornered emperor, threatened by a mutiny that would end his reign. The other is that he is a tactical genius, who has now got rid of the most likely other center of power apart from the CCP: the PLA. Let’s say outright that if, as of today, we had to choose between the former and the latter, we would rather pick the second interpretation. No murmurs of any kind leak on China’s social media, showing absolute control.

So let us walk through some conjectures, and through some known unknowns. Ockam’s Razor tells us that a most likely guess is that under duress or as a bargaining tool, General He Weidong and associates would have ratted on Zhang Youxia himself. However, if we postulate that Zhang was a childhood friend of Xi himself, it would also have been at their own risk. There have been allegations that Zhang Youxia had held back on He’s promotion at the CMC. The notion that they would have belonged to different factions emerged after, not before He’s downfall - a lot of comment is really regressive analysis. In truth, both were described, through their life and career, as Xi loyalists. Zhang, because of his father’s proximity to Xi Zhongxun, Xi’s father, in the PLA’s Northeast Army Corps before 1949, and their hometown ties to Shaanxi. But He was quickly selected and promoted by Xi through the ranks, and they both served within the Eastern Command, the one facing Taiwan.

What has once again proven untrue is Xi’s faithfulness to old friends. Perhaps the term was never apt for Zhang Youxia, older than Xi and renowned as a fighter during the short war with Vietnam (1985).In theory, Xi should clearly have owed his comeback from the wilderness and nomination as secretary to the CMC to his father’s pull. In any case, there are other cases of Xi giving up on close associates: not only Qin Gang, who rose from Xi’s protocol chief to ambassador and Foreign Affairs minister before being dismissed for misconduct.

Much more tellingly is Liu Yuan’s case, the former president Liu Shaoqi’s own son, a childhood friend whom Xi cites as the other second generation cadre who decided of his own will with Xi to get out of Beijing for a provincial assignment in 1985. Even more crucial, Liu Yuan led a struggle against corruption in PLA procurement in 2009-2012 which predated Xi’s actions. He was thought to have a political future but was instead forced to retire at the mandatory age in 2015 and has not been heard of since. To some extent, the same has been true of Wang Qishan, Xi’s hatchet man at the head of China’s CCDI from 2012 to 2017 and China’s real number n°2 during that period. It is dangerous to oppose Xi, but friendships are not forever.

There are, however, some signs of political tension that could explain Xi’s radical choice. First, the very purge of other members coupled with Zhang’s senior status by itself creates the possibility of a future power struggle. And Xi brooks no equal. Second, only weeks ago a very surprising leak emerged from China: a six-hour footage of the post-Tiananmen trial for PLA General Xu Qintian. This commander of the elite 38th regiment that guarded Beijing - but whose officers had many children studying at Beijing universities - who balked at Deng Xiaoping’s oral order to pounce on the demonstrators. Such a leak is unprecedented. What emerges from the footage is General Xu’s own defense, of having only requested a written order through state channels. Although Xu had finally complied with the martial law order, claiming State authority against Party authority smacked of "constitutionalism"(宪政) is a cardinal sin under Xi. Xu Qingtian had been sentenced to a very short jail term and later died under house arrest in China. If one adds that there have been previous - and unsubstantiated - allegations of Zhang Youxia "mispronouncing" his oath of loyalty by mentioning the Constitution, one can imagine suspicion from Xi, never a trustful individual in any case.

Will this postpone any intended direct move on Taiwan? In the short term, certainly. The CCP’s indictments indicate that there remains much rot and ideological dissonance to weed out in the PLA - neither this nor the ensuing climate of terror among the officer corps looks favorable for a major offensive.

But these are only guesses. Surprising the adversary, inside and outside China, seems a trait that Xi Jinping shares with Mao. Therefore, as of now, the short answer is: we don’t know.

Copyright image : Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP
Xi Jinping in Beijing in December 2024.