Xi’s Military Purge Backfires: Why Zhang Youxia Still Has Protection

The question is, will the NPC revoke Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenni's delegate status, a necessary step to formalize their investigation? Now, the standing committee of the 14th NPC has already held two meetings to review delegate qualifications. The first was called an emergency meeting held on February the 4th. That session brought on three mid-level officials from China's aerospace industry. All eyes were on the second session, which was held yesterday, I mean, from the 25th to the 26th. Officially, the session resulted in 19 delegates losing their status, of which nine were PLA officers. Five full generals, one lieutenant general, three major generals. Now, the nine senior officers across multiple branches, and according to Xinhua, the NPC standing committee also removed Major General Liu Shaoyun from his position as president of the military court. Interesting, isn't it? They brought down the general who prosecutes generals. And yet, the most important thing is the announcement did not mention Zhang Youxia or Liu Zhenni. It did not revoke their NPC delegate status. It did not remove them from their state CMC positions. This was the second NPC standing committee meeting this month. Many people believe these meetings were convened specifically to formalize the two generals' removal and provide institutional endorsement, but apparently that did not happen. It was complete silence when it comes to the matter concerning the two generals. So how do we explain that? I think the silence is louder than anything we've heard so far. So right now, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenni remain NPC delegates. Their formal political status has not changed at all. Such an irony. In fact, on nearly all official CCP websites, with the exception of CCTV, their profiles, titles, and photographs remain intact. Now, under the PRC's own constitution and procedural framework, without first stripping their NPC delegate status, criminal investigations against them cannot formally proceed. That's the immunity that NPC delegates have. So in other words, at least on paper, any investigation lacks proper legal grounding. So Xi Jinping might have acted, but the institutional endorsement has not followed. Now, let's go a little deeper and take a look at the impact of the purging of the nine generals on the PLA. Let me just give you some statistics. You're all aware of Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign, but scale matters. Over the past 14 years, more than 200,000 officers have been disciplined. Nearly 160 generals have been purged. Around 10 members of the Central Military Commission have been removed. This now exceeds the intensity of Mao-era military purges. So what we're witnessing is not ordinary discipline. It's structural rotation by annihilation. So let me give you the impact of the latest purge of the nine generals from four perspectives. It was not confined to one service. It was system-wide. Now, let me tell you who they are, the nine people. So the first was former army commander Li Qiaoming, political commissar of the Information Support Force Li Wei, former navy commander Shen Jinglong, former navy political commissar Qin Shengxiang, former air force political commissar Yu Zhongfu, commander of the 73rd Group Army Ding Laifu, rocket force base number 64, and its commander Yang Guang, and then the assistant director of the CMC's political work department Bian Ruifeng, and then the political commissar of the CMC national defense mobilization department Wang Donghai. So these are the nine people. The first is a generational break in the army. When Li Qiaoming is politically neutralized, all post-reform army commanders, there were three of them, Han Weiguo, Liu Zhenli, and Li Qiaoming, have effectively been removed from power. That means the entire generation that led the ground forces after Xi's reforms have been wiped out. In the PLA, the army is considered the regime's foundational pillar. Traditionally, it's the most important branch of all the services. So that's destabilizing. So that's the first impact. And the second is even Xi Jinping's new combat forces are not safe. The fall of General Li Wei, political commissar of the information support force, carries particular symbolic weight. Now, the information support force was established in April 2024. That's not even two years. It was established when Xi Jinping dismantled the formal strategic support force and reorganized it into new branches, including information, cyber, and aerospace components. This force represents the future of warfare, cyber operations, electronic warfare, digital battlefield coordination. It was personally unveiled by Xi himself, and yet its top political commissar has now followed. That sends a stark message. Under Xi's system, institutional lifespan offers no protection. Nothing is permanently secure. That's the second point. The third is retirement no longer protects you. Three of the nine generals taken down are retired. They are former navy commander, Shen Jinglong, former navy political commissar, Qin Shengxiang, and former air force commissar, Yu Zhongfu. They have collectively disappeared. That sends an extreme signal. Retirement is no longer a safe harbor. Political accountability is retroactive and indefinite. In previous decades, stepping down offered insulation. Today, there's no such thing. Loyalty has no expiration date. The message is a chilling one. There is never a safe exit. Now, the last observation has to do with frontline shock. Two of the nine generals were commanders of real frontline units. They are commanders of the 73rd Group Army, which is the unit that faces Taiwan. The other one is the commander of the rocket force, Base 64. It anchors nuclear deterrence. Commanders at both nodes have been purged in this last round. When you remove leaders at this level, you do not merely punish individuals. You interrupt operational continuity. You disrupt institutional memory. Purge cycles fracture trust and planning rhythms. Some experts say the pattern of promotion and purge, this annihilation-style rectification, has effectively degraded the PLA from a professional fighting force into a ceremonial armed body. That leads to another structural consequence. Xi Jinping is becoming the lonely commander at the top of the pyramid. He stands alone at the apex. If you examine the nine fallen generals more closely, you'll notice something interesting. People say some are associated with the Xi Jinping camp, while others are linked to Zhang Youxia. The only person who people believe is linked to Zhang Youxia is the former army commander Li Qiaoming, rumored recently to have resisted Xi Jinping and staged a coup during the Lunar New Year. Remember I told you about this a few days ago? He is widely viewed as aligned with Zhang Youxia. Here's the issue. He has been absent from key meetings since last August. He has been suspected to have fallen even earlier than that. It's just that yesterday, his downfall was officially announced. As far as who took him down, was it Xi Jinping taking down Li Qiaoming at this time, or Zhang Youxia might have taken him down last year? There are other interesting observations from the list or from the announcement. Now, it's officially confirmed for the first time that General Wang Renhua, former secretary of the CMC's Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and General Zhang Hongbin, former political commissar of the Armed Police Force, and Lieutenant General Wang Peng, former head of the CMC training and administration department, were stripped of their NPC status due to, quote, suspected serious violations of discipline and law. Now, here's the background information you need to know. These three generals, their delegate status were already revoked on December 27th last year, along with He Beidong. However, the formal announcement of their crime was only made known yesterday. So their delegate status was stripped last December, but nothing was said about what they did wrong until yesterday. These three figures are widely believed to be taken down by Zhang Youxia last year when it was announced. Now, the fact that their crimes are now officially confirmed suggests that Zhang Youxia's earlier decisions have not been reversed after his arrest. NPC further confirmed the downfall of generals Zhang took down by announcing their crimes. In addition, at least two retired full generals were absent from this NPC session. First is General He Ping, former political commissar of the Eastern Theater Command, and General Zheng Weiping, former political commissar of the Strategic Support Force, which has become the Information Support Force. Now, how do people know? Based on the footage of the meeting, people spotted their empty seats. The two might have run into problems very recently because their seat arrangements were made at the meeting, they just didn't show up. Also, these two had attended the 19th Standing Committee session last December, so they were fine last December. But now, they're absent. So why is the absence of these two generals significant? Well, He Ping served as deputy political commissar of the Western Theater Command after Xi Jinping's military reforms. And then in 2017, he became political commissar of the Eastern Theater Command, widely considered a core stronghold of Xi's military faction. And then Zheng Weiping was He Ping's predecessor. He became the first political commissar of the Eastern Theater Command I believe it was 2016. And later, he became the political commissar of the Strategic Support Force, a unit personally created by Xi Jinping. Of the five theater commands, the Eastern Theater Command is the most important to Xi, because it is responsible for Taiwan operations and includes the former 31st Group Army in Fujian, where Xi built much of his early political network. So in other words, the two absent generals are senior officers promoted during Xi Jinping's military reform era, and deeply embedded in what many consider Xi's military base. Their sudden absence strongly suggests turbulence inside Xi's own camp. Did Xi Jinping take them down on his own, or anti-Xi forces did? So the confirmation of investigations against the three generals from December, combined with these two unexplained absences, point in the same direction. The purge within Xi Jinping's military network has not slowed at all. It is continuing. This reinforces what we have been analyzing since Zhang Youxia's arrest. Even if Xi has moved against Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, he has not secured full control over the broader military system behind him. He has not fully consolidated military power. And without full control of the guns, he cannot prevent anti-Xi forces from gradually encroaching on his network within the armed forces.