The official announcement of the investigation into Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, head of the Joint Staff Department, is a genuine shocker.
It is shocking on several levels.
First, Zhang Youxia was the most senior uniformed officer in the country. Second, his relationship with Xi Jinping went far beyond ordinary patronage. Their families’ ties dated back to the revolutionary years in the Northwest, when their fathers fought side by side. Zhang was widely seen as one of Xi’s most trusted confidants inside the military system. Third, this came after years of high-profile, rolling investigations into top generals that have already fundamentally reshaped the PLA’s command structure. With this latest development, Zhang Shengming, head of military discipline, is now the only remaining uniformed member of the Central Military Commission. Every other vice chair and member in uniform is gone.
And yet, in another sense, Zhang’s fall is not entirely surprising.
Before becoming CMC vice chair, Zhang oversaw armaments and the military space program, and essentially the core of China’s military-industrial complex. Over the past few years, the most systematic and far-reaching investigations have been concentrated precisely in this area: weapons procurement, aerospace, missiles, and their surrounding defense enterprises. Almost all of the senior military commanders and major heads of defense companies were ensnared. It was a great reckoning inside an opaque system long known for its capacity to corrupt.
Under that lens, it would have been more surprising if Zhang, as the man at the top of that system, had been personally untouched.
Yet, this is still emotionally shocking. Under the old logic of Chinese elite politics, where personal loyalty, shared history, and patronage networks often provided implicit protection, this should not have happened. The fact that it did tells us something important.
The most plausible explanation is that Xi is demanding absolute purity inside the military system, and it reinforces a broader pattern we have seen repeatedly: Xi does not care about face-saving. He is a man of a deep sense of mission, with little interest in looking benevolent or maintaining appearances. If something is rotten, he does not compromise and settle for a half-deal. If someone, no matter how close that someone used to be, must fall to serve his objective, so be it.
For ordinary observers, however, the theatrics of court politics quickly give way to two practical questions.
First, what does this mean for the People’s Liberation Army’s fighting capability? Is the PLA being weakened by the removal of so many senior officers? The second question is inevitably about Taiwan.
