China Ousts 4 More Senior Military Commanders In Widening Purges

China has removed two top generals from its highest military command body and expelled two other senior commanders from a Communist Party-controlled legislature, as turbulence continues within the upper echelon of the country's armed forces.

Once China's No. 1 general, Zhang Youxia, has been removed from the national Central Military Commission (CMC), according to a brief statement issued by the National People's Congress Standing Committee via state media Xinhua on Aug. 28.

The statement didn't offer any reason for the swift dismissal of Zhang, who had served as vice chair of the national CMC since 2018.

Zhang, also a member of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) ruling Politburo, was abruptly placed under investigation in January, along with another senior commander, Liu Zhenli. Both men were accused of serious violations of discipline and laws, a phrase that generally refers to corruption or disloyalty.

Liu was also stripped of his title as a member of the national CMC, according to Xinhua.

Technically, China has two separate CMCs-one affiliated with the state and the other within the CCP-sharing the same personnel and leadership. In practice, however, the Party's CMC holds the real power. The two commanders haven't been formally, or at least publicly, expelled from the Party's military body.

The latest announcement effectively reduced the CMC from six members to one, plus Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the top.

China's armed forces have been embroiled in an unprecedented purge that has almost vacated the leadership of every branch of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), raising questions about the military's combat readiness.

A February report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that more than 100 senior military commanders have likely been purged since 2022.

Unlike the military chiefs previously targeted, Zhang and Liu are among the few active-duty generals in the country who have battlefield experience. Zhang served in China's brief war with Vietnam in 1979, while Liu took part in border skirmishes with Vietnam in the 1980s.

Because these officers were members of the legislature, they previously had legal protection against arrest or prosecution. By removing them from those positions, that protection was stripped away, opening them up to criminal prosecution.

According to China insiders who previously spoke to The Epoch Times, Beijing has already decided to charge Zhang, likely with corruption-related allegations, to shift attention away from the power struggle within the Party.

In addition to Zhang and Liu, the NPC on Aug. 28 revoked the membership of Zhong Shaojun, a long-time aide to Xi, according to Xinhua.

Zhong became Xi's secretary in the early 2000s when Xi was transferred to a position in Zhejiang, China's top economic powerhouse on the eastern coast. Since then, Zhong followed Xi into roles in Shanghai and, later, the central leadership in Beijing.

After Xi took power as the Party leader in late 2012, Zhong was appointed to the CMC chairman's office, working directly under Xi, and elevated to the military rank of senior colonel.

Also expelled from the NPC on the same day was Ju Qiansheng, commander of the PLA Strategic Support Force.

The purge in the defense establishment shows no signs of abating. In an Aug. 24 notice, China's military said it's seeking information from the public on potential procurement violations in the Rocket Forces, a secretive PLA unit that commands the country's conventional and nuclear missiles.

This notice echoed a 2023 announcement by the PLA's Equipment Development Department that encouraged citizens to report potential corruption and misconduct related to hardware procurement going back to October 2017. Since then, China has expelled two defense ministers and all four generals who had commanded the Rocket Forces.

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I was watching something about this the other day.

Upshot was this: what we're seeing is fallout from the terrible performance of Chinese weapons systems, particularly their advanced, "stealth-detecting" radars, as demonstrated recently, first in Venezuela, and then in Iran.

The uselessness of these systems against American stealth platforms has made the Chinese military procurement and R&D establishment look silly, and this has wide-ranging implications, which the senior levels of China's government cannot ignore.

Most obvious is that the price that other nations are willing to pay for China's "top of the line" air defense systems is falling like a rock.

But just as obvious is that China's defense of its homeland is looking to be as porous as a sieve. Remember, Taiwan signaled to the PRC leadership that their first move, if the mainland attacks them, will be to disintegrate the Three Gorges Dam.

The problem goes deep. Very deep. China's whole R&D system is completely corrupt. Anyone who knows Chinese people well knows that they "study for the test." They don't usually care a fig for the subject itself, whatever it is. Their R&D community is full of PhDs who don't have any emotional interest in the subjects in which they are supposedly educated. All they care about is making what they're doing look like what their boss wants it to look like. And what his boss wants it to look like. As you go higher and higher in the management structure, it's full of nepotism, full of political hires, who don't really know or understand or care how the systems they're in charge of are supposed to work. As long as they appear to work, life is good.

It appears that a great deal of money that was allocated by Beijing for an F-35 killer, and for a front-line fighter that can exceed the performance of the F-22, has disappeared without generating any performance improvement.

Another area of concern is jet engines. China just can't seem to produce engines that can come anywhere close to America's best high-performance engines, and the reason has to do with engineering that's done at the molecular level. Biggest result is that the J-20 fighter, which has three engines (to the F-22's two),has about one-third the combat radius of the F-22, and its supercruise capability doesn't work.

Their export technology fell flat on its face, in Venezuela and Iran. That's what's driving a lot of the personnel turnover in their defense industry right now.

Interesting. Not only did their vaunted air defense systems utterly fail but their anti ship missiles which they sold to Iran did not work either. Details are sketchy but it appears the US Navy was able to jam them or re-direct them away from their intended targets mid flight. China’s weapons systems failed miserably.

That will not only affect sales abroad but also....what does that tell them about what would happen if they did try to take Taiwan? They can’t feel good about that. No wonder heads are rolling.

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