The scale of Secretary General Xi Jinping’s military purges is shocking. More than 100 senior leaders have been removed since 2022. And that number keeps growing, with nine military officers purged just last week and three more retired generals removed from a senior advisory body in early March. But it is the January removal of China’s top general, Zhang Youxia, that represents the most visible episode of these purges, and the one with the greatest implications for the future of the People’s Liberation Army. The purge of Zhang came just months after the unprecedented expulsion of nine senior generals which led to vacancies that remain today among the military’s most senior ranks. Other than Xi, only one Central Military Command member remains in place.
Theories abound over the real trigger for Zhang’s removal. China’s Ministry of National Defense accused Zhang of “suspected serious violations of discipline and law,” a standard euphemism for corruption, while also asserting that he “severely trampled on and undermined the [Central Military Commission] Chairman responsibility system,” code for accruing too much individual power. Western reporting has attributed the purges to Zhang’s corruption, his harboring of fundamental disagreements with Xi over Taiwan, his consolidation of excessive power, and, less plausibly, allegations that he provided nuclear secrets to the United States. These explanations differ in detail but share the assumption that Zhang’s removal resulted from a certain behavior rather than a predictable outcome in a system that perpetually generates reasons to purge.
For more than a decade, purges have served Xi as an effective tool for accumulating authority, enforcing discipline, and suppressing alternative power centers within the party’s military (China has no state military in the way that most Westerners would understand it: the People’s Liberation Army reports to the Chinese Communist Party). But what began as a tool for consolidating power and mitigating the corrosive impacts of corruption has now evolved into a structural necessity for preserving authority. Senior military leaders, by virtue of their longevity and rank, are inextricably linked to the coercive practices and corruption that sustain Xi’s system. In such a regime, loyalty — or even personal friendship with the leader — is insufficient to confer lasting protection.
Still, as shocking as this all might be, purges at the apex of the military in Xi’s China are inevitable. It is my view that Zhang’s removal was not the result of a discrete, time-sensitive transgression, but rather the predictable outcome of a political system characterized by endemic corruption, the dictator’s dilemma, and elite paranoia.
Purges as Party Politics
Through Leninism, a political system that concentrates authority at the top and tolerates no meaningful external accountability, the Chinese Communist Party has succeeded in securing near-total control over political affairs in China. In such an environment, purges are not anomalies but rather essential mechanisms for maintaining control and enforcing discipline. Three structural realities help explain the persistence and escalation of purges.
Conspicuous Corruption
First, corruption is endemic because it is baked into the system. Centralized power and the lack of institutional oversight foster a perpetually corrupt environment among party elites. This dynamic is amplified by the fact that in a centralized Leninist system, power and proximity to the secretary general are the ultimate currency. Since power is distributed selectively among a chosen few based on loyalty more than competence, advancement depends less on performance than on bribery, graft, nepotism, and patronage networks.
Because there is only one legitimate institution of power, it is nearly impossible to definitively tackle corruption without threatening the system itself. To do so, party officials would have to be cops, judges, and executioners against the very structure that granted them access to power in the first place. As Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s chief enforcer Lavrenty Beria once remarked, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” For Xi, corruption charges are an omnipresent lever to pull because every party official is complicit in the corrupt system, making purges an indispensable component of elite control.
Dictator’s Dilemma
The second reality is the dictator’s dilemma: If an autocrat ignores internal fissures, they will deepen. At the same time, acknowledging them undermines the very claim to infallibility on which autocratic legitimacy depends. Because autocrats rely primarily on performance legitimacy — as opposed to democracies that also require procedural legitimacy — publicly acknowledging mistakes or inefficiencies is not viable. Purges of high-ranking party officials, then, allow Xi to control the narrative, shifting blame for deficiencies in governance to characters who, once purged, are labeled as enemies of the state and said to have weakened the system from within.
Each purge, however, fails to address the actual structural weaknesses that plague the party system in the first place. As failures recur, a new crop of supposed saboteurs must once more emerge for public consumption. Scapegoating lower-level officials becomes increasingly insufficient, forcing blame to migrate upward to preserve the regime’s narrative of competence and accountability. The dictator’s dilemma requires a recurring supply of scapegoats, and in a system where elites like Zhang are embedded in policy execution, that supply ultimately extends to even those directly beneath Xi.
Paranoia Politics
The third reality is that for autocracies like Xi’s China, both reliance on and a paranoia of internal enemies are, paradoxically, unavoidable. Internal enemies, real or imagined, are relied upon to justify ubiquitous self-policing and pervasive surveillance. And a dictatorial leader in an opaque system who surrounds himself with sycophants can never be confident of the benign ambitions of his underlings, making elite paranoia a rational and enduring condition.
Because the Chinese Communist Party effectively has a lid on widespread internal discontent thanks to a colossal and ruthlessly effective internal security apparatus, the greatest threat to Xi’s rule comes from those with proximity to power, meaning proximity to Xi. For leaders such as Zhang, who develop independent influence and loyal networks by virtue of their seniority and longevity, suspicion is inescapable. Purges, often justified on corruption grounds, function as a mechanism for neutralizing internal enemies at the elite level. In Xi’s system, elite paranoia is logical and unavoidable, making purges at the apex inevitable.
What to Expect if This Argument is Correct
If Zhang’s removal does indeed reflect inevitable structural forces rather than a specific, time-sensitive transgression, several observable patterns should follow. First, purges will continue to target senior figures with proximity to power, to include the next crop of Xi’s hand-selected Central Military Commission leadership. Second, official party justifications will remain deliberately vague and formulaic, relying on recyclable charges rather than case-specific evidence. Third, elite turnover will increasingly prioritize personal loyalty and political reliability over institutional continuity, with longer vacancies, a potential reworking of the size of the Central Military Commission, interim appointments, or even rapid promotions that prioritize loyalty over experience and further concentrate authority with Xi rather than rebuild durable command structures.
Operationally, this dynamic will likely reinforce strict adherence to top-down decision-making, further eroding initiative and risk-taking in the ranks. Already, the Chinese military provides little incentive for military commanders to act with independence and agility, even deploying political commissars to serve alongside and oversee military commanders. In an environment where senior officers are periodically purged, the incentive to avoid visible failure intensifies, encouraging caution and deference to top-down guidance. This may manifest in increasingly scripted exercises, inflated readiness reporting, and a lack of tolerance for unscripted initiative, patterns widely noted as pervasive in the culture of the Communist Party’s military. Should these patterns persist, they would lend further credence to the argument that the People’s Liberation Army leadership turmoil reflects the internal logic of Xi’s political system rather than episodic instances of misconduct.
Strategically, Xi’s removal of Zhang and the hollowing out of the Central Military Commission may produce short-term disruption and reinforce caution, making conflict over Taiwan more likely to be a crisis to be avoided rather than an opportunity to be seized. Over the medium term, however, the consolidation of more politically reliable leadership could reduce institutional friction around Xi’s strategic preferences. As Joel Wuthnow argues, the purges may “provide [Xi] greater latitude to order troops into combat to achieve what might be a key legacy for him — the long-elusive unification of China with Taiwan.” With senior leaders like Zhang gone, deterrence will increasingly rely on influencing Xi himself rather than relying on institutional voices within the military to shape or moderate his thinking.
Why Now?
Zhang was retained at the 20th Party Congress in 2022 despite having reached customary retirement age, suggesting that at the time Xi found this general with whom he shared close personal ties irreplaceable. It’s also why some analysts viewed him as too big to fail when senior level purges began ramping up in 2023. Yet the retention of Zhang may have reflected short-term institutional needs for continuity following Xi’s unprecedented third term. Once the broader wave of purges intensified in 2023, elite vulnerability began extending upward to preserve the credibility of discipline within the system.
It is not that other factors, such as power consolidation or disagreements over Taiwan played no role, but rather that reasons would always exist, and those reasons — compounded with the structural pressures of the system — are what ultimately led to his downfall. Xi also could have allowed Zhang to retire at the next Party Congress. The decision to remove him prematurely highlights the importance of the purge itself as a political weapon unique to Xi’s toolkit. Moreover, allowing Zhang to simply retire would have preserved institutional continuity, whereas the public purge serves to reinforce elite vulnerability.
Why Alternative Explanations Fall Short
First, if Zhang’s removal were primarily the result of Xi’s ongoing efforts to consolidate power, one would expect evidence that Xi’s authority over the Party and the military remained contested or insecure. On the contrary, Xi’s hold on power strengthened in recent years to the point where he had already cemented his undisputed control over People’s Liberation Army affairs. He abolished term limits, sidelined rival factions, and presided over repeated rounds of purges that removed disloyal or potentially competing officers well before Zhang’s disappearance. That Xi moved against Zhang only after having already achieved near-total dominance over the party and the military suggests that the purge was not simply about acquiring more power, but about maintaining the political utility of purges within a system that requires periodic elite vulnerability.
Second, if Zhang’s removal were primarily the result of newly uncovered corruption, one would expect to see charges with specificity and time-sensitivity. Instead, the charges are generic and no detailed accounting of Zhang’s alleged corruption has been made public, nor has any effort been made to distinguish his actions from the tolerated corruption endemic among senior party and military elites. Additionally, as a member of the party’s top military leadership for more than a decade, Zhang necessarily operated within the same patronage networks and coercive practices that Xi himself relied upon to consolidate control over the armed forces. That he was removed only after years of service as a trusted insider — and just 18 months before he was due to retire at the next Party Congress — suggests that corruption was less a discovery-driven trigger, but a politically convenient justification for a pre-ordained outcome. Corruption thus explains how Zhang was removed, but not why he was removed when he was.
Third, if Zhang’s removal were primarily the result of substantive disagreements with Xi over Taiwan readiness or timelines, one might expect to see visible policy reversals or operational uncertainty. Instead, Xi’s public messaging on Taiwan has remained consistent, and the military’s modernization, training tempo, and signaling toward Taiwan, including a massive show of force the month before Zhang’s removal, have continued apace. Moreover, if divergent views on Taiwan were sufficient cause for removal, one would expect earlier intervention or broader ideological-based purges. That Zhang’s dismissal occurred without such indicators suggests that Taiwan disagreements, while plausible as an associated factor, are insufficient to explain the timing and scale of the purge. As with corruption, Taiwan likely served as a convenient rationale rather than the real driver of an outcome shaped by structural pressures.
Finally, if Zhang’s removal were primarily the result of espionage, specifically allegations that he provided nuclear secrets to the United States, one would expect extraordinary corroboration and signaling. As Thomas Christensen argues, “Treason is a politically useful charge for Xi to deploy to explain to other officers why a reported commander was taken down. No one can complain about Zhang’s removal if he is deemed a traitor.” Espionage claims help explain how Zhang’s purge was insulated from internal resistance, not why it occurred when it did, reinforcing the conclusion that structural pressures rather than discrete acts drove the outcome.
Conclusion
When shakeups of this scale are observed, there is often a desire to assign specific, easily digestible catalysts. But Zhang’s removal was less likely the result of a singular transgression than an inevitable eventuality resulting from the structural reality of Xi’s system., While Xi’s early purges consolidated his power, the current wave of purges targeting senior officers helps sustain it.
While the purges do not detract from the Party’s commitment to creating a military capable enough to pursue its geopolitical ambitions such as seizing Taiwan without fear of overwhelming U.S. military intervention, they do risk undermining continuity, trust, and initiative across the People’s Liberation Army. Purges, and the threat of purges, foster uncertainty and fear of political missteps, which in turn degrades decision-making and may reduce readiness. Understanding why these purges occur, and why they won’t stop, is critical to understanding a persistent Chinese Communist Party vulnerability.
Rob Pierce is a vice president at American Global Strategies and a national security affairs fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. He has a background in Naval Intelligence, Capitol Hill, and the State Department. This essay represents only the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense or U.S. government.
Image: Netson via Wikimedia Commons
