cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26025
General Zhang Youxia — a central figure in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), a member of the Politburo, and a former political ally of Xi Jinping — has been dismissed. It’s not just another episode in the routine of the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-corruption campaign. Rather, it highlights a deeper crisis: growing doubts about China’s preparedness for a high-intensity war, the difficulty of mobilizing a population hit hard by economic struggles, and the Bonapartist turn that both major superpowers — China and the United States — are undergoing. This turn is as authoritarian as it is fragile, and occurs in a context where both countries’ respective room for maneuver is increasingly limited.
Beijing: Purges, Fear, and a Lack of Military Preparedness
The purge primarily has political significance for the military. For over a decade, President Xi has relied on the accelerated modernization of the PLA as the material support for his “national rejuvenation” project and as a key element of the strategy that would allow China to resolve the “Taiwan issue” to its advantage and reposition itself vis-à-vis the United States in the Indo-Pacific. General Zhang was one of the architects of this process: he oversaw the equipment system, approved the expansion of the Missile Force, and embodied the continuity of the “revolutionary” military aristocracy.
However, recent investigations have exposed a disturbing reality: artificially inflated combat capabilities, systemic corruption, and grotesque technical failures — ranging from missiles with water-filled tanks to unusable silos — have cast serious doubt on the effectiveness of China’s arsenal. Even more troubling, the earlier downfall of Defense Minister Li Shangfu revealed vulnerabilities in counterintelligence, suggesting that U.S. intelligence had deeply penetrated the PLA. And in 2024, General He Weidong, second vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, who was also subsequently forced to resign, called for drastic measures against “fake combat capabilities” in the military. This phrase could also refer to “fictitious” maneuvers that did not meet standards, such as “night exercises” conducted at dusk.
Even more revealing, although China has made significant progress in naval capabilities — evidenced by the launch of its third aircraft carrier, Fujian — and now surpasses the United States in the number of vessels at sea, the sinking that same year of a nuclear submarine not yet in service raised concerns about the quality of Beijing’s technology. For Xi, who is obsessed with the slogan “fight and win wars,” the conclusion was stark: the army, meant to be the decisive instrument of his historic project, risked becoming a “paper dragon”; that is, impressive in parades, but unreliable on the battlefield.
In other words, documented failures of naval and air equipment, a series of serious submarine accidents, and the increased acoustic detectability of its underwater units reveal a structural gap between the regime’s proclaimed innovation and its actual capacity to wage a protracted conflict. Exacerbating these issues are a highly politicized chain of command and an organizational culture untested under the pressure of real warfare — factors that limit tactical autonomy and the ability to adapt to combat.
More than a fully mature military force, China’s armed power appears today as a rapidly expanding instrument of deterrence, but one that remains fragile when assessed against the classic criteria of operability, reliability, and strategic resilience.
In this context, Zhang’s dismissal is both a demonstration of internal authority by Xi and an indirect admission of weakness. Far from signaling an imminent military adventure — as several analysts hastily assert based on the strengthening of the new “Great Helmsman’s” political control — it indicates that Beijing doubts its own capacity to sustain a real war, let alone a protracted conflict against the United States and its regional allies.
The Social Disposition Towards War in Question
Adding to this military fragility is an even deeper contradiction: the absence of a social base willing to sustain a protracted war. The domestic context is radically different from that of previous decades. Chinese capitalism is undergoing a phase of structural exhaustion. Weak growth, the real estate crisis, massive youth unemployment, and historically low birth rates are eroding the implicit social contract on which the Chinese Communist Party has relied for decades: prosperity in exchange for obedience.
Urban youth, trapped between precariousness and a lack of prospects, are disillusioned, and encapsulated by the slogan “we are the last generation.” Under these circumstances, demanding sacrifices from the population in the name of an imperial war in the Pacific is politically explosive. Xi knows this. That is why his immediate priority is not to launch an external offensive, but to consolidate power at home, crush any autonomy of the military apparatus, and prevent social tensions from escalating into divisions at the highest levels of the state.
Chinese Bonapartism: Concentration of Power and Fear of a Power Vacuum
From a historical perspective, Xi’s shift can be characterized as a form of late Bonapartism: an extreme concentration of power in the hands of a figure who rises above factions, governs through purges, and arbitrates between conflicting interests, but who does so on an increasingly eroded social base.
The decapitation of the Central Military Commission — effectively reduced to Xi and the head of discipline — expresses both the regime’s strength and its weakness. Strength, because no other actor can openly challenge the leader; weakness, because this authority rests on fear, not on renewed social legitimacy or robust institutions.
This fragility is accentuated in Xi himself, who lacks the “historical imprint” of the leaders of the revolutionary generation (particularly Mao, but also Deng Xiaoping), and who feels constantly challenged for not yet having a distinct legacy to claim. The obsession with absolute loyalty reveals a persistent fear of conspiracies, defections, or preemptive strikes — a fear deeply rooted in the regime’s own history. Power is becoming concentrated because the regime perceives that it can no longer rely on either the economy or social consensus.
The American Mirror: Trump and Bonapartism in Crisis
This trend is not unique to China. The United States, in its own hegemonic crisis, exhibits similar traits. Trumpism is the expression of a Bonapartist drift within a decaying bourgeois democracy: personalization of power, direct appeal to a reactionary social base, and use of the repressive apparatus — particularly against immigrants — as a mechanism for recomposing political authority.
However, unlike China, American Bonapartism is structurally weaker. Trump’s partial retreat in the face of the response from the population and the working class in Minneapolis against his immigration policy clearly illustrates this. The unprecedented social mobilization, the influence of various civil society actors, such as local churches, and the internal contradictions within the state apparatus have imposed concrete limits on his authoritarian offensive.
Where Xi can purge generals and consolidate power without mediation, Trump encounters resistance that forces him to recalibrate his offensives, back down, or negotiate. And, if he loses the midterm elections, impeachment cannot be ruled out.
Two Superpowers, One Narrow Corridor
The rivalry between China and the United States does not represent the rise of two self-assured historical projects, but rather the clash of two powers trapped in a decaying international system. Blackmail, pressure, and partial compromises have replaced the grand expansionist strategies of the past. In this context, open war appears more as a permanent threat than an immediately rational option, even if it is obviously not without the risk of dangerous errors.
The purge of Zhang Youxia, far from indicating that China was hurtling unchecked toward war, betrayed the situation of a power caught between its imperial ambitions and its increasingly severe material, social, and political constraints. At the same time, it reflects a broader trend: the recourse to Bonapartism as an emergency response to the crisis of the world order. This recourse could concentrate power in the short term, but exposes the profound fragility of the regimes that embody it.
In both Beijing and Washington, political authority is hardening because the ground is shifting beneath the regimes’ feet. For workers and young people, the conclusion is decisive: neither Chinese authoritarianism nor reactionary American imperialism offers a progressive way forward. Both are paving the way for further repression while exacerbating already heightened international tensions.
Faced with this, only independent, international, working-class intervention from below can break the logic of war and Bonapartist hardening that constitutes the sole response these powers offer to their own impasse.
Originally published in French on February 3 in Révolution Permanente.
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