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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.
(Disclaimer: despite my passable Mandarin and KTV skills, I’m far from a China Hand, so take all the following with a hefty splash of light soy sauce)
Most of this analysis seems plausible, except for:
I’d be more inclined to believe this if the sole remaining military officer on the CMC—indeed, the only CMC member at all, apart from Xi himself—were anyone other than Zhang Shengmin (no relation to Youxia, AFAIK).
Whatever else you may say about him, at least Zhang Youxia (along with fellow [ex?] CMC member Liu Zhenli, who is similarly “under investigation”/possibly purged) has actual combat experience, specifically in the mostly-failed 1979 Vietnam adventure. By contrast, Zhang Shengmin is, by all accounts, a purely political creature. If the goal were to clear out the old deadweight from their cushy sinecures and make room for smart, young upstarts, why keep Shengmin around?
Not a China hand at all, but, bouncing off of your point, a genuine question: does Xi really need to trump up corruption charges if you just want to bring in fresh talent? Seems like it would be much easier and less embarrassing to just say "why don't you retire." I realize that might not work on people who are trying to cling onto power, but you'd think you'd only need to purge one or two of them successfully to make the point. Purging people after that suggests (at least to me) concerns about either their power or trustworthiness.
The extension would be: if nuclear secrets were really being passed to the US, would the CCP want to embarrass themselves by admitting it domestically?
My reaction was "who knows what's really going on there." Followed by "I suppose they just want an excuse to drop him out of a helicopter."
Western media releases are often panicked, middle of the night, written from the back of a car on a phone type jobs to get ahead of the Washington Post expose release at 5.30am. CCP ones are usually much more deliberate, attempting to portray the situation as they want it to appear. Chinese media does question weird disappearances, but there's a lot more top down control over narrative and publishing timeframes.
If a new boyfriend coyly admits that he likes a particular kind of porn ("big tits, MILFs") in response to your playful question on the third date, you should probably assume this is like 25-50% of the kinkiness he really goes for (anal, gangbangs).
"He released nuclear secrets" does sound better than "he's been on the CIA payroll for 15 years" for example.
Zhang Youxia was in custody for three months. Initially the CCP pushed that this was about corruption, bribes, and forming political cliques. The nuclear secrets thing came out later. Maybe this is to absolve Xi from the very real criticism of unfairly cleaning house/purging. It's hard to argue with a dismissal if a guy is giving nuclear secrets away and can be portrayed as an unfortunate necessity amid a national betrayal. Liu Zhenli was chief of staff of the CMC and removed at the same time though, and as far as I can see they haven't claimed he's a CIA source.
The CMC has been cut down from 7 to 2 members, and I just can't be sure what's going on. Like @stuckinthebathroom says, the sole survivor is a political appointee, Zhang Shengmin. And he's new to the job, only 12 months in or so. His background seems to be hunting down corrupt officers... or giving Xi the pretence to remove political/military rivals?
The main takeaway is that Xi is definitely personally in control of more of the party and military than ever before. I doubt this shifts the Taiwan needle to dangerous new levels, but it does seem like Xi is getting older and instead of doing succession planning he could be doing legacy planning (the Putin special?)
Dunno. I'm just hoping more of these chinese missiles are filled with water instead of fuel than we know about.
I’m curious, why do you say this? Regardless of the veracity of the charges against Zhang Youxia, I’ve read that he was one of the few people (perhaps even the only one) to tell Xi that his designs on Taiwan are hare-brained and likely to fail. With him out of the picture, how could an attempted invasion of Taiwan not be dangerously more likely?
It shifts it up, for sure, but like 5% to 7.5% or something. Not insignificant at all, but not like 20% is what I meant.
There's a lot of institutional pressure to not invade Taiwan in China.
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