cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49702544
China’s investigation into its top general is taking President Xi Jinping’s years-long corruption purge into his innermost circle, underlining that even close personal ties do not offer protection when it comes to loyalty to the party leadership.
China experts said Xi’s move against his long-term ally and Politburo member Gen. Zhang Youxia also concentrates even more power in the president's hands, makes the already secretive command of China’s military more opaque, and suggests that a near-term attack on Taiwan is less likely.
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Both Xi and Zhang are princelings, children of former senior officers. The 75-year-old general was initially expected to retire in 2022, but Xi kept him on the Central Military Commission (CMC), the Chinese military's top leadership body, for a third term, underscoring their closeness.
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The military was one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Xi after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached its elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Two former defence ministers were also purged from the ruling Communist Party in recent years for corruption.
“I think corruption concerns are probably real, though those are typically more a pretext to remove someone in Chinese politics," said Jonathan Czin [of the Washington-based Brookings Institution], citing how deeply entrenched graft was before Xi's campaign.
Another senior member, Liu Zhenli, chief of staff of the CMC's Joint Staff Department, was also placed under investigation, effectively shrinking the seven-member body into two, with Xi at the top. "Xi has eviscerated the People's Liberation Army (PLA) top brass like no leader before him," said Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Asia Society.
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ELIMINATING THREATS
In a front-page editorial on Sunday, the PLA Daily described the probe as a major achievement, adding that the two generals had "seriously undermined and violated" the Chairman Responsibility System.
Under the system, Xi, as the CMC chairman, is vested with the "supreme military decision-making." It also serves as the "institutional arrangement for practising the party's absolute leadership over the army," according to China's government.
“To invoke violating the Chairman Responsibility System suggests Zhang had too much power outside of Xi himself,” said Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
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But leaving the army leadership depleted and without replacements raises questions about how the world's largest military is run.
“It is honestly not clear how the chain of command should be functioning - especially since so many of the officers who would otherwise be eligible to replace the disposed members of the CMC have themselves been ousted,” Brookings’ Czin said.
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