Dear reader,
Much has been written and said about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Jan 24 purge of the country’s highest-ranking military general Zhang Youxia, as well as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) chief of joint staff Liu Zhenli. Facts, though, remain shrouded in secrecy – and may never come to light.
What we do know is this.
Mr Xi has, since reaching the leadership apex in China in 2012, overhauled the country’s command structure to centralise power in himself.
He broke chains of command, and instead created overlapping lines of authority, all reporting to him. A favoured tactic is to place trusted officials in parallel positions to keep one another in check.
And that was how it was in the Central Military Commission (CMC), the ultimate authority over China’s armed forces.
Was Gen Zhang, a childhood friend of Mr Xi and his No. 2 in the military, disloyal? This is where one has to veer from established information into speculative territory.
Gen Zhang may or may not have been actively planning a coup. But what he likely did was to make Mr Xi feel insecure.
One reading from The Straits Times’ China bureau is that Gen Zhang may have sealed his own fate by securing the ouster of fellow CMC members Miao Hua and He Weidong in 2025 on charges of corruption, a perennial and endemic issue in the PLA.
The two younger military leaders were earlier promoted to the CMC. As per Mr Xi’s strategy of creating checks and balances, they were widely viewed as counterweights to the older, influential and more experienced Gen Zhang, one of few in the army who can boast of having combat experience having gone through the Sino-Vietnamese war.
A credible view from analysts in Beijing is that Gen Zhang presented Mr Xi with “evidence” of the two younger men’s corruption, thus forcing his hand to remove them even though he would have preferred not to. With them gone, Mr Xi’s careful balancing of power within the CMC is disrupted.
The inevitable question that follows is: who could be purged next?
Going by the above argument, one possible answer could lie among powerful old-timers who were supposed to have been checked by younger rising stars, but have managed to be rid of them instead.
One might look to, say, the Chinese foreign service circle, which has been similarly rife the past few years with abrupt dismissals – first, foreign affairs minister Qin Gang, then the urbane Liu Jianchao, head of the party’s international department.
With the 21st National Congress – when Mr Xi looks to secure his fourth term as China’s top leader – looming in late 2027, China’s political reshuffle appears far from over, raising the question of who will still have a seat when the music finally stops.
As usual, I leave you with a selection of our correspondents’ articles and podcasts.
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