Purging the generals confirms Xi’s absolute power

The question for countries like Australia and its allies is how the generational upheaval at the top of the Chinese military affects its ambitions and capabilities.

In the past year, Xi Jinping has successfully stared down Donald Trump over trade and watched approvingly as Chinese companies occupied the commanding heights of industrial technology.

Over the weekend, we got a reminder about the other China, with the announcement in Beijing that Xi’s top general, and a senior colleague, were under investigation for defying the leadership and corruption.

The first China, on the verge of being a high-tech superpower, exudes confidence about its inexorable rise and increasingly views itself as a peer competitor with the US.

The other China, a far less sturdy and impressive one, is one of brutal purges, power struggles and institutional frailties.

To re-cap, China’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday that Zhang Youxia, the highest-ranked general on China’s Central Military Commission (CMC), along with his chief-of staff, had been detained.

They were accused of “serious disciplinary and legal violations”, which decoded, means accepting payoffs and, worse, undermining Xi’s authority over the People’s Liberation Army.

This was astounding news by itself. Zhang had been considered Xi’s man in the military. Their fathers were revolutionary comrades, and Xi had kept the 75-year-old on in the top job well beyond the informal retirement ages.

“Beijing’s ambitions won’t change. Xi or no Xi, the ruling party will not give up its efforts to take Taiwan.”

But Zhang’s defenestration didn’t happen in isolation, coming on the heels of a deep purge already underway of the most senior ranks of the military.

Of the six generals appointed to the CMC, China’s peak military body, at the last communist party congress in late 2022, five have been arrested and removed from their jobs.

It represents, in the words of one analyst, a “total annihilation of the high command” and is unprecedented in the Chinese military since 1949.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Zhang had been accused of leaking nuclear secrets to the US. There were also rumours of Zhang attempting a military coup.

These pieces of information should be treated with scepticism. In any case, the facts, as announced by the Chinese, are wild enough on their own.

The purge is almost certainly not over. Once figures as senior as Zhang are put under investigation, the focus moves inexorably to their associates and their families.

If nothing else, Xi has made sure with his latest clean out of the top brass that his authority over the military is absolute.

The PLA, after all, is not China’s national military. It is the armed wing of the communist party, and thus under Xi’s direct command.

The wording of an article in the PLA Daily is clear about Zhang’s primary sins, saying he had caused “severe damage to the military’s political awareness”.

In other words, Zhang failed to give priority to political loyalty to Xi and the party, instead placing “military effectiveness above political control”, according to K. Tristan Tang, of the Jamestown Foundation.

The question for countries like Australia and its allies, then, is how the generational upheaval at the top of the Chinese military affects its ambitions and capabilities.

Certainly, Beijing’s ambitions won’t change. Xi or no Xi, the ruling party will not give up its efforts to take Taiwan, to dominate the South China Sea and to push the US off its once dominant perch in maritime Asia.

Equally, Chinese military capabilities are growing rapidly and will continue to do so in the near term.

Last year alone, the PLA unveiled new fighter jet programs, commissioned a third aircraft carrier, basked in the praise for the performance of its weapons systems in the India-Pakistan conflict and introduced new combat drones.

These expanding capabilities are already being displayed for its neighbours in uncomfortable ways, including the naval circumnavigation of Australia and the sustained military exercises around Japan.

All that, however, is small beer compared with any decision to move on Taiwan; Xi has ordered his military to report on its readiness by 2027.

Success or failure in any Taiwan contingency, be it in the form of a war or mounting a quarantine or blockade to force Taipei to negotiate, is a make-or-break moment for Xi.

With no seasoned senior officers at his side to speak of – let alone ones who Xi knows, has worked with and trusts – would he really want to take such risks?

And would the officers be willing to offer frank advice anyway? After the weekend, it is clearer than ever that loyalty and obedience matter more than rank or experience.

The clean out confirms something evident in China since Xi came to power in late 2012, of more power being pulled into the hands of one person.

For Xi, China’s leader-friendly system is not a weakness but a potential source of strength, and indeed a necessity to turn China into a high-tech superpower free from coercion by the US.

China, under Xi and his predecessors, has already done far better than many western critics of communism ever thought was possible.

This latest purge, if nothing else, reminds us that the race to the finishing line will be as nerve-wracking for the Chinese as it is for the rest of us.