By Jian Yi
“The People’s Liberation Army is facing a major crisis. The level of turmoil within its leadership is unprecedented since the height of the Cultural Revolution.”
That stark judgment anchors a recent analysis by Dr. Zi Yang, published in The Diplomat on Jan. 26, examining the purge of senior Chinese generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli—and what their downfall reveals about the trajectory of China’s military under Xi Jinping.
The article appeared only days after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formally announced that both men were “under investigation.” According to Yang, the episode provides a rare window into the internal power struggles of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the strategic recalculations now shaping Beijing’s posture toward Taiwan.
Separate commentary in the CCP’s own military newspaper has reinforced these anxieties. While overt military coercion against Taiwan remains constant, Yang argues that the more dangerous threat lies elsewhere: the expansion of covert, CCP-aligned networks operating inside the island itself.
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A deepening crisis inside the PLA
Dr. Zi Yang is a researcher at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
At the outset of his analysis, Yang revisited a warning he issued in The Diplomat in October 2025. At the time, he wrote that the fall of Zhang Youxia would likely precipitate a systemic crisis within the PLA.
“That moment has now arrived,” Yang wrote.
One of the clearest signals, he noted, came from the Ministry of National Defense. Breaking with established practice, the ministry’s spokesperson avoided the routine invocation of “anti-corruption,” a narrative normally used to frame such purges. In Yang’s assessment, this departure laid bare the intensity of personal and political conflict at the very top of the PLA.
Other observers have pointed to how swiftly Beijing moved to downgrade the political visibility of the cases involving Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli. The muted handling, Yang suggested, reflected internal fragility rather than institutional confidence.
He noted that the Central Military Commission (CMC) is now reduced to just two members: Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin. Zhang Shengmin, Yang wrote, is a lifelong political commissar with virtually no operational command experience. With the removal of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli—both senior commanders with firsthand combat backgrounds—the PLA’s professional core has effectively been gutted.
The fallout may not end there. Yang warned that the purge of Zhang and Liu is likely to implicate additional figures, potentially unleashing a cascade of instability across the military hierarchy.
“The level of turmoil in the PLA leadership,” he concluded, “is unprecedented since the height of the Cultural Revolution.”
An opaque purge and familiar CCP patterns
As for the precise reasons behind the purge, Yang emphasized that the PLA’s extreme secrecy makes definitive conclusions nearly impossible.
“It can be said with certainty,” he wrote, “that aside from a small circle of core figures who planned the arrests, almost no one has a complete grasp of the truth.”
Even those insiders, Yang added, may not fully understand Xi Jinping’s calculations. Historically, CCP leaders have cultivated an aura of inscrutability, deliberately presenting themselves as unfathomable.
Yang characterized the removal of Zhang and Liu as both abnormal and deeply perplexing. From a purely functional perspective, he argued, Xi Jinping depends on trusted professionals in key military posts to maintain control over the PLA. Liu Zhenli, in particular, oversaw the PLA’s C4ISR systems—command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—capabilities central to modern warfare and heavily dependent on technical expertise.
Although Yang did not explicitly name Xi Jinping in this context, his analysis made clear that neither Xi nor Zhang Shengmin possesses comparable operational competence.
History, Yang noted, offers bleak precedents. Within the CCP, ruthless purges of one’s own ranks have long been the rule rather than the exception.
In How the Red Sun Rose, historian Gao Hua documented how Stalin, beginning in 1927, launched mass purges across the Soviet Communist Party under the pretext of eliminating “Trotskyites.” After 1937, those campaigns escalated into widespread terror and mass killing.
The CCP followed a similar path. Gao Hua detailed the interrogation methods used by Kang Sheng’s security apparatus, which relied on systematic torture to extract confessions and fabricate charges. Beatings, the “tiger bench,” and electric shocks administered with telephone wires were routine.
Even this brutality was not enough. Gao wrote that Kang Sheng demanded ever more extreme cruelty to satisfy what he described as Kang’s sadistic impulses.
Under Kang’s direction, the Yan’an “anti-Trotskyist” campaign produced scenes that defy easy description. Shi Zhe, a former member of the Social Affairs Department and political secretary to Ren Bishi, later recalled visiting Yan’an’s Liushudian Peace Hospital between 1940 and 1941.
Led by a head nurse into a large hall, Shi Zhe and Chen Yu encountered a vat containing the preserved body of a man in his thirties, submerged in formalin. The nurse explained that the body was intended for medical dissection. Originally, she said, there had been three such bodies.
“They were all counterrevolutionaries,” the nurse told them. “They were processed with Kang Sheng’s approval. We know nothing of their names or backgrounds.”
Asked whether the men had been alive when brought to the hospital, the nurse replied that they had been sent under the guise of receiving medical treatment.
Such accounts, Yang observed, inevitably echo contemporary reports from China involving organ harvesting and unexplained disappearances. Many once believed the Communist Party would evolve with time.
Science fiction writer Ni Kuang offered a harsher analogy. To claim the Communist Party had become progressive, he said, was like insisting a cannibal tribe had changed simply because it now wore suits and used knives and forks.
Xi Jinping and the widening rift with the officer corps
Returning to the present, Yang analyzed the unraveling relationship among Xi Jinping, Zhang Youxia, and Liu Zhenli.
“The strained relationship among Xi Jinping, Zhang Youxia, and Liu Zhenli may have reached an irreparable stage,” he wrote, culminating in a complete rupture. Like many aging strongmen, Xi appears increasingly suspicious of those around him.
That insecurity, Yang argued, is exacerbated by Xi’s weak ties to the professional officer corps. When career officers voice dissenting views, distrust deepens.
Whatever the immediate motivations, Yang concluded that the removal of Zhang and Liu marks a development of extraordinary consequence.
“The PLA’s senior leadership is now in a state of turmoil,” he wrote. “What outsiders can observe is only the surface. Events behind the red walls are bound to be far more shocking.”
Negative emotions now dominate interactions among senior officers, eroding cohesion and command stability. In its current form, Yang stated, the CMC is no longer capable of functioning normally.
Limited action as a diversionary strategy
Yang’s subsequent assessment carries particular weight for audiences beyond China.
With Zhang and Liu gone, he argued, internal power struggles within the military leadership are likely to intensify, raising the risk of factional fractures. As uncertainty and resentment spread among senior generals, pressure will continue to build.
If these struggles escalate further, Yang warned, they could reach an irreversible stage, triggering even more severe upheaval.
What does this mean for the PLA’s operational capacity? According to Yang, the purge of Liu Zhenli has clearly degraded the military’s ability to conduct complex operations. Chaos at the top, combined with the effective decapitation of professional leadership, makes a large-scale assault on Taiwan in the near term far less likely.
That does not mean restraint across the board.
Yang cautioned that limited actions remain a realistic option. Such moves would be designed to deter external actors from exploiting the PLA’s vulnerabilities while generating a rally-around-the-flag effect for Xi Jinping amid acute internal strain.
The idea that the CCP military might resort to limited actions to deflect domestic tension aligns with historical precedent. Recent commentary in the PLA Daily has echoed similar themes, emphasizing vigilance toward Taiwan and beyond.
Party jargon and strategic intent
On Feb. 2, the PLA Daily published an article in its “Great Wall Outlook” column titled “Enhancing the Targeted Nature, Proactiveness, and Shaping Capacity of Military Struggle.”
The phrasing itself is revealing. As with much CCP jargon, the language feels familiar while remaining deliberately opaque.
Several passages, however, expose the underlying message. The article urges the military to “fully grasp the policy bottom lines, strategic approaches, and operational patterns of different adversaries,” and to “select struggle methods rationally, control the intensity of struggle, and manage timing, degree, and effectiveness,” while coordinating military actions with political, economic, and diplomatic tools.
It also cites The Art of War: “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. Thus, the highest form of warfare is to attack strategy; next is to attack alliances; next is to attack armies; the lowest is to attack cities.”
Taken together, these passages point to Beijing’s broader intent. Even as it applies external military pressure on Taiwan, the CCP appears increasingly focused on mobilizing so-called “patriotic pro-unification forces” inside the island to undermine it from within.
By invoking the principle that the highest form of warfare is to attack strategy, Beijing signals its faith in what Lenin once described as the susceptibility of any fortress to internal collapse. In this light, the PLA Daily’s emphasis on “targeted nature, proactiveness, and shaping capacity” becomes clearer.
Military force, in this framework, exists to support covert networks inside Taiwan. Internal and external efforts are meant to be synchronized to shape public perception and achieve subjugation without open war.
Under such conditions, external intervention becomes far more difficult. For this reason, Yang concluded, the gravest threat facing the Republic of China today lies not in visible PLA deployments, but in the CCP’s covert influence operations within Taiwan—and the pro-Beijing propaganda machinery that amplifies them.
