China’s top general removed in Xi military purge
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Rumours of a power struggle at the top of the Chinese Communist Party burst into the open on Saturday when President Xi moved to purge the country’s top general.
General Zhang Youxia, like Xi himself a “princeling” who grew up in the halls of power under Chairman Mao, was formally placed under investigation for “suspected serious violations of discipline and law”, along with a key aide.
Zhang is the highest-ranking general on the Central Military Commission. In China’s opaque political system, the military is more powerful than the formal government, ranking only behind the party itself in status. Xi is the commission’s chairman, while Zhang was his senior vice-chairman.
All last year, rumours swirled in Beijing of a power struggle between Xi and Zhang , who was the last man in the top apparatus not to owe his rise solely to the party leader.
At one stage, it was claimed by dissidents abroad that Zhang had staged a secret military coup and that Xi had been left a “puppet commander”. The opposite now seems in fact to have occurred — Xi has removed, one by one, all China’s most senior military commanders in the last three years and taken effective charge of the military himself.
The repercussions for China’s international relations and military posture remain unclear, making it an uncertain time for Sir Keir Starmer to be making his first visit to China . The prime minister is due to land in Beijing with an entourage of business chiefs on Wednesday for a meeting with Xi.
Zhang, who at 75 is three years older than Xi, is the son of a senior Red Army general, Zhang Zongxun. Zhang senior hailed from the same part of China, Shaanxi province, as Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, another general who eventually became a vice-premier.
The two sons are said to have known each other growing up. Although Zhang is always said to have risen on his own merits through provincial military postings, once Xi was singled out as China’s next leader, their shared background was seen as making Zhang a natural military ally.
That may have been his downfall too. “The one thing for sure in Chinese politics is the more your star grows, the more chance you might outlive others, but also that you might be for the chop,” said Rebecca Nadin, a former diplomat who is an analyst of Chinese politics and international relations at the Overseas Development Institute.
Zhang’s fall has overtones of the most celebrated purge of the Cultural Revolution. In 1971, Lin Biao, Mao’s long-serving defence minister and designated successor, suddenly fled amid allegations -— never corroborated then or since — that he had staged a failed coup attempt.
He died the same night, when the plane in which he was trying to escape to Moscow crashed in Mongolia, leaving the affair still one of the communist era’s great mysteries.
Whether Zhang’s fate mirrors Lin’s or not, the recent purges are the most significant changes to the party leadership since 1989. In the fall-out from the Tiananmen Square massacre, Deng Xiaoping sacked and placed under house arrest the then party secretary and other leaders and promoted a new generation who eventually succeeded him in power.
Unlike Deng, Xi now has no rival veterans or ideologues with competing views around him, and is clearly the most unchallengeable leader since Mao himself.
The significance of Zhang’s rise and fall lies in the massive reforms in the People’s Liberation Army over which he and Xi together presided. Before they took over, the military had relied on a crude strategy of strength through numbers; the PLA’s military hardware was not only backward compared to the West’s, but in a state of decay.
The two men have since forged the world’s largest navy by numbers of ships, along with an air force and advanced missile systems capable of challenging American dominance in the western Pacific.
The biggest challenge was updating China’s rocket force, which was in a particularly poor state. Reports claimed that the silos in which the country’s inter-continental ballistic missiles were held had rusted over.
Article is LOCKED by author/seeder
Who is online
77 visitors
Another "moderate" who wasn't gung ho to invade Taiwan is purged. Pretty much every high ranking army official from 2022 ago has been either arrested or disappeared.
Another day in the life of a brutal dictatorship....
"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."
Yet progressives throw themselves into the arms of the country that personifies everything they claim to care about, even if its just the flavor of the day, like Ukraine. Putin is only able to keep fighting because of significant Chinese aid. Does that bother progressives? Nope... In their anti-reality world, it's Trump's fault for sending billions to Ukraine.
Bizarro world.
Here are anti-ICE Protesters marching under a Maoist banner...
Mao murdered tens of millions of civilians. Perfect example of what matters to the anti-movement. It's certainly not "violence"