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China’s Top General Accused of Giving Nuclear Secrets to U.S.
What are we to make of the latest major Chinese purge?
I am no seasoned China expert, but broadly Xi’s purges have fallen into three primary categories. The first is purges of those directly tied to his political rivals, most notably the Bo Xilai faction he defeated to achieve and solidify his grip on power. These have mostly been over for a while. The second is a combination of provincial and national anti-corruption initiatives that have targeted some of the most brazen graft; this is not to say no innocents have been targeted, only that there is a solid case that a lot of these purges have been at least semi-legitimate (friends of Xi and allies may not have been targeted, but many of those targeted were corrupt). The third involves more short-term and medium-term political and economic objectives, including temporary purges where the person or people in question are disappeared for a time, then brought back with renewed loyalty. We can presume they have been taught a lesson.
There are three major angles to looking at this purge, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Mild to Moderately Bearish: The current purge is wholly legitimate. That is to say one of the PLA’s leading figures and an erstwhile close Xi ally really was selling nuclear secrets to the US, which objectively means that the PLA was compromised at the most senior level. This isn’t unreasonable - the Western press in the last few days has discussed Zhang as a ‘key contact’ for Western military officials in China, which is surely code for ‘nobody’s surprised he was doing it’.
Yes, there’s a way of construing this as the removal of a tired old corrupt general and his replacement by younger, more loyal, more patriotic cadres (more on that below), but one has to squint pretty far for it if this is accurate; if the charges were known for a while but not acted upon, it suggests that Xi was fine with this going on at least for a while. The man was also 75 and could have been retired.
Moderately Bullish: The general was not corrupt, but represented a generation of dim or mid-witted PLA sinecures unfit for any actual major conflict with a top-tier peer power (you know the one). A legacy of a poorer, more dysfunctional, more third-world, less capable, less advanced China, he has been replaced - even if he wasn’t corrupt - by smart younger men from the new China, the Deepseek China, the hypersonic missile China, men capable of actually defeating the USA in battle or at least of taking Taiwan without embarrassment. His removal serves as a warning - if you’re not ready, if you’re here because your uncle in the CCP got you a job in the military in 1974, get out quietly, don’t hang on, don’t challenge progress.
Mildly (if at all) Bearish: The purge represents nothing more than another step toward Xi taking absolute power in China. Already the most powerful Chinese political figure since Mao, Xi wants full, absolute control of the military in the event of a crisis or conflict of any kind. Bearish why? Because he is getting older, and taking absolute power always comes with risks, even as a great man, especially at that age.
I think this is a good reminder of one of the strongest arguments against abuse of power and censorship.
The official stance is apparently that Zhang disagreed too much on PLA and military timelines.
Often we see arguments against censorship or abuse of power that go like "imagine what happens if the other side did this to us?" with the idea that the only/main issue of censorship is an external threat. Rather I think the main threat is internal, the abuse of power that makes people think "well maybe that one is ok, I didnt like the victims anyway" that normalizes, and more importantly, empowers the abuse.
Because often we see in authoritarian regimes that the threat is "from within". The purge heavy censorship people within "your group" have the selection effect of being purge heavy censorship people, and that means they support purging and censoring. What we see in the dictatorships and authoritarian governments isn't a crackdown on just "the enemy" with freedom for everyone else, it's a crackdown on all. Putin's top officials and allies aren't free to voice much opposition to the Ukraine war, and seemingly Xi's top officials aren't free to disagree too much on military timelines (or whatever actually upset him if the official stance is a lie). I doubt most top officials in North Korea, no matter how loyal, can publicly disagree with Kim Jung Un on a major issue and live to tell the tale. Even historically one of the biggest communist cucks in history Deng Xiaoping (now a beloved former leader of China for opening up the markets and making them actually function economically) was purged twice by Mao.
A lot of this I think lies in the flaw of tribalist thought to begin with. The idea of "my side" and the "other side" is overly simplistic to begin with, the major differences between factions are only put up with to face the Greater Evil. "Infighting" is just fighting, differences in beliefs trying to establish dominance. But tribalism pushes people to gloss over that, ignore the sins of "their own" and then they end up surprised when the pro purge people are fine with purging them too over their own disagreements. First They Came is a pretty good showcase of how this happens. The Enemy List of the authoritarian power abusers grows alongside their growth in power, until everyone is sitting around scared of being declared an enemy. You'll slowly lose your own freedom as your "enemies" get purged and you'll cheer it on smug and certain it could never come for you.
I don't know this for sure, but there's a high chance that Zhang was complicit in, or at least accomodating of, previous purges done to rivals or competition. I wonder if he feels any regrets over that now.
I was just going to link that in reply to your post. Happy 27th January.
Of course, Niemoeller is hardly the closest friend of the regime the Nazis murdered, that dubious honor likely falls to the SA leadership around Ernst Roehm, whose loyalty to the cause only bought them a quick death.
Nor is it uniquely the Nazis, power accumulated through violence has a tendency to not stay contained. The median victim of Robespierre was not an aristocrat or royalist, but (I think) a proponent of the revolution who simply was a bit more moderate, or a commoner who just got picked up by his goons when they were looking for an enemy to behead.
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