The End of China’s Central Military Commission
What the Zhang Youxia purge tells us about Xi Jinping’s China
Gruezi!
1. Xi Jinping has gutted his high command
On Saturday, China’s Ministry of National Defence announced that Zhang Youxia – the country’s most senior uniformed officer – was under investigation for ‘serious violations of discipline and law.’ Also swept up: Liu Zhenli, chief of the Joint Staff Department.
With their removal, China’s top military body, the seven-member Central Military Commission appointed at the 2022 Party Congress, has essentially ceased to exist.
The only remaining members are President Xi himself and the head of the Discipline Inspection Commission. Five of six uniformed officers have been purged in less than three years.
China’s military leadership is now a politician and someone from internal affairs, with no one between them and an officer corps that has just watched every senior general disappear.
2. Zhang wasn’t expendable – which is why he’s gone
Zhang was from China’s revolutionary aristocracy. He served in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War and the 1984 Battle of Laoshan.
His father, Zhang Zongxun, fought alongside Xi’s father during the revolution. The two families could trace their connections to the same region of Shaanxi.
In 2017, a retired PLA officer told the South China Morning Post that Xi once saw Zhang as a kind of elder brother. But even families have feuds.
Former Pentagon China hand Drew Thompson met Zhang during a 2012 delegation to the United States.
He says Zhang stood out from his peers: intellectually curious; willing to engage with foreigners; respected by his staff as a soldier rather than a pen-pusher. He jumped at the chance to fire a machine gun at Fort Benning. He asked smart questions.
He had, says Thompson, ‘an aura of competence around him,’ but not an aura of indestructibility.
