We are all shocked by the
sudden arrest of General Zhang Youxia, the most senior military leader
in China. His crime: “serious violations of discipline and law.” Also being
detained is General Liu Zhenli, chief of staff of the Joint Staff
Department of the Central Military Commission (CMC).
The Wall Street Journal claims that Zhang Youxia is accused of passing sensitive information about China’s nuclear weapons program to the United States, in addition to corruption allegations.
Just a couple of days earlier, on 19 January 2026, China’s top anti-corruption and party discipline bodies — the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and the National Supervisory Commission — announced that Gu Jun (顾军) had been placed under investigation for suspected “serious violations of Party discipline and national laws.”
Gu, 65, had led much of China’s civilian nuclear power development. He served as General Manager of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) from 2018 until his retirement in 2024. CNNC is one of China’s major state nuclear power and technology conglomerates, deeply involved in planning and building nuclear power plants. Before that, Gu spent decades in senior roles across nuclear power enterprises, including leadership positions at Sanmen Nuclear Power Company and the former State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation — both central to China’s civilian nuclear expansion.
Gu Jun oversaw China’s rapid nuclear power growth, which has included the construction and commissioning of dozens of nuclear reactors, as China pushes to diversify its energy mix and cut emissions.
Zhang visited Moscow around 20–21 November 2025, meeting Russia’s defence leadership — especially Defence Minister Andrei Belousov — to discuss deeper military cooperation and strengthening ties between the Chinese and Russian armed forces. He has not been seen publicly since this visit.
Are all these events connected? Or only some?
Narratives from Taiwan
While much of this can be discounted, it is certain that China’s military rank-and-file must be rattled.
Zhang and Xi’s Family Ties
- Zhang Youxia was born in 1950 in Beijing.
He comes from a military elite family, part of the “princeling” class (红二代
/ hóng èr dài).
- His father, General Zhang Zongxun (张宗逊),
was a senior PLA commander during the Chinese Civil War and later decades,
serving in significant leadership roles.
- Zhang Zongxun and Xi Zhongxun (习仲勋),
Xi Jinping’s father, were from the same region in Shaanxi Province and
were comrades-in-arms against the Kuomintang in the 1940s.
Some analysts note that this father-to-father friendship was a basis for Zhang Youxia and Xi Jinping being part of the same princeling network, likely aiding Zhang’s rise within the PLA, especially after Xi assumed leadership in 2012. Some commentary even describes Zhang as someone Xi regarded like an “elder brother,” reflecting close familial-style ties beyond formal politics.
This raises the broader question: Do political calculations and discipline campaigns override old friendships at the highest levels of the CPC? History suggests they do.
What Really Caused Zhang’s Removal?
There is no verified evidence that Zhang has family in the U.S. or the West. While he is certainly wealthy, there is no reason — barring blackmail or a belief that the CPC’s hold on China is collapsing — for him to “sell out” to the CIA, as some speculate.
However, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) — successor to the KGB’s First Chief Directorate — might have learned of a potential plot to oust Xi, especially given the rapid elimination of top generals in recent months. (Some are said to be Xi’s protégés!) Xi, the master strategist, appears to have neutralized the threat swiftly.
Of course, there is also a simpler explanation, rooted in Chinese history: an emperor who trusts no one, even those who are loyal or owe their rise to him, is likely to remove them pre-emptively.
Ramifications for China’s Military
My reading is that Xi recognizes modern wars are rarely won solely on the battlefields. The experience of Russia in Ukraine underscores this. Xi seems focused on installing young, capable leaders skilled in electronic warfare, integrated command systems, and advanced surveillance technology. In this regard, China is well-equipped, and many younger officers may welcome the removal of corrupt superiors.
Conclusion
End
The CPC's Cultural Revolution caused Xi personal griefs in the formative years of his political career.
ReplyDeleteYet he resiliently became the CPC's chief ideological proponent of socio-political purity not only for domestic rejuvenation of one-sixth of humanity but also as credential for a new world that urgently shares a common future built on development, security, civilisation and governance.
In steelily internalizing the contesting historical forces that befell him, he has thus shown the pragmatism of a Zhou and notwithstanding all the demonizing snipes hurled at him by the west which are only now abating.
A moment's thought shows why it was necessary he has to clean the hamlet. Although preponderant in military resources, the KMT of the last era lost its traction with the people on the mainland because of corruption. If that same corrosion is not arrested, the people today will also rumble, and all the more as the economy continues to present lie-down difficulties.
Moreover, it is not a small wound to have one's national rocket, nuclear and procurement arms commiting perfidy that will only reward the very instigative rival that is the US which has continuously labelled China a threat even after the US' entire spy network on the mainland was cordoned sanitaire because it used the same communications protocol broken in and passed on by Iran. After all, substandard silo caps and water in lieu of submarine fuel can sink the best counter-attack plans.
Whether cash or kind, sinecure nepotism or crypto wallets, corruption is easy to breed when a country is emerging, the private sector becomes rich like never before, the purse-string holders are also the dispensers of contracts and jobs, and a bottle of maotai can loosen resolve in the neon-lit halo of guanxi-lubricated dens of persuasion. Of the last as a small example, China overpaid by USD98 Billion to Rio Tinto. That sum could have supported many unemployed youths.
Yet it must be said in reducing the military apex to two, a problem presents in bottom-up feedback. Bad news can be buried and successes overblown. Both are dangerous for making the right decisions on time which for warfare can be mortal.
However, as militaries modernize, automation becomes the norm to avert more human casualties than politically acceptable in which case machines fighting machines are a warfare of algorithms with less need for medal-bedecked military figureheads whether generals or admirals. Modern warfare today can be over in a few hours rather than years. All the same, one would like to think there's still a role for strategists like von Manstein, Zhukov, Patton and Genda inasmuch codebreakers like Thuring and Rochefort.
Meanwhile, the US' National Security Strategy presumably retreats US focus to the western hemisphere in the form of the Donroe Doctrine. Some will however prize caution for it is but a strategic realignment to rebuild resources targeting China using Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines of the first island chain. It's a matter of China's geographic advantage counterbalanced by the US' use of its Asian proxies. Which thus reduces to the factor of time-to-engage squared against distance by triangulation of targets. Since the earth is an oblate spheroid squat at the equator less so at the poles, that would also explain why Trump is so hellbent to get Greenland; it's a shorter distance for missiles to travel, not that hypersonic self-steering ones are so easy to catch.
The antidote is to couple economically until it makes no sense to try and dominate, fueled by distrustful suspicion. Decoupling is a regressive tax on the tail of a plethora of disadvantages.