On Feb. 26, 2026, the standing committee of China’s rubber-stamp legislature quietly tore open the curtain on the latest round of Xi Jinping’s military bloodletting. In a single session, 19 delegates lost their seats, including nine military officers. Five of the nine held the rank of full general, the highest active-duty rank in China’s armed forces. The announcement confirmed previously rumored purges of the former navy commander Shen Jinlong, former navy political commissar Qin Shengxiang, and former air force political commissar Yu Zhongfu. It also delivered a bombshell: Li Qiaoming, the former army commander once considered a powerful and capable military figure, had been removed without any prior public announcement.
The timing was deliberate. China’s annual “Two Sessions,” the rubber-stamp legislative meetings and the Party’s political advisory conference, begin on March 4 and 5. These are the CCP’s most prominent political theater events of the year, and this purge was designed to set the tone.
The delegate purge was widely interpreted as a “political flogging of fallen generals,” a final administrative step confirming that internal Party investigations are complete and judicial proceedings will follow. There is no return from this.
Yet the names that generated the most speculation were those that did not appear on the removal list. Zhang Youxia, the vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission and the second most powerful military figure in the country, and Liu Zhenli, the joint staff chief, both remain listed as delegates in the military and armed police delegation. Their conspicuous survival on the delegate rolls is not necessarily a sign of safety. It may signal something more ominous: that a larger reckoning is still being prepared behind closed doors.
Xi Jinping’s personal military secretary reportedly raided
If Zhang Youxia’s continued presence on the delegate list was expected, the reported downfall of Zhong Shaojun shattered any remaining illusion of stability within Xi’s innermost circle.
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According to the prominent political commentator Chen Pokong, who broke the story on Feb. 27, Zhong Shaojun, the former director of the Central Military Commission’s General Office, was subjected to a surprise raid on a Friday. Zhong was not a peripheral figure. He was a core member of Xi’s “Zhejiang New Army,” the group of loyalists Xi brought with him from Zhejiang province when he ascended to national power. For over a decade, Zhong served as Xi’s personal military secretary, a “sentinel within the military” whose job was to monitor rival generals on Xi’s behalf.
Zhong’s fall completes a devastating pattern. Xi relied on three military secretaries across his tenure. Qin Shengxiang, inherited from the Hu Jintao era, has been confirmed as purged. Fang Yongxiang, associated with Xi’s Fujian province network, went down alongside the Eastern Theater Command faction when He Weidong and Miao Hua were purged. Now Zhong, Xi’s most trusted personal appointee, has reportedly been raided as well. All three are gone.
Zhong’s trajectory told the story before the raid confirmed it. His transfer from the powerful CMC General Office directorship to a political commissar post at the National Defense University, without the expected promotion to full general, was already a signal of lost favor. Rumors had circulated that Zhong might recover his standing after Zhang Youxia’s influence waned, perhaps even rising to vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. The raid destroyed that possibility.
Xi Jinping is besieging himself
The line from Li Qiaoming’s removal to Zhong Shaojun’s raid traces a clear arc of self-destruction.
Xi has declared open war on the “red second generation,” the children of revolutionary-era CCP founders who form a distinct power bloc within the Party and military. Zhang Youxia is more than a military commander; he is the spiritual figurehead of the red second generation’s presence in the armed forces. By systematically purging Zhang’s allies and even targeting his own former confidants (if those confidants shifted their loyalties or cut deals with the red second generation faction), Xi has made clear that his trust in this entire cohort has collapsed. He is forcing every general to declare allegiance, pushing the red second generation off the political stage, and, in doing so, cornering himself, because he, too, is a member of that same generation.
The dictator’s isolation deepens. When even a secretary who served at your side for decades can be sacrificed, every remaining official understands the message: no one is protected. The inevitable result is a court of terrified subordinates. Stalin’s pre-war officer purges offer the closest parallel: by the time he finished destroying his own military leadership, the Red Army was so hollowed out that it nearly collapsed when Germany invaded. Xi is reproducing the same dynamic, eliminating anyone with independent competence or loyalty to any institution other than himself, until no capable or willing servants remain.
Military morale is collapsing. Li Qiaoming was widely regarded as having played a critical role in securing Xi’s position during a 2022 crisis. His reward was to be discarded without ceremony. This “use and discard” pattern will chill whatever residual loyalty remains in the officer corps. When generals discover that absolute obedience to Xi Jinping does not guarantee survival, passive resistance and quiet mutiny become the rational response.
Who wins after the purge?
The 2026 “Two Sessions” will be a grim affair. Every empty seat in the delegate hall represents a career destroyed and a factional score settled. Xi Jinping believes that purging his way to security will consolidate his power. Every cut he makes, however, severs another pillar holding up the regime.
When the “barrel of the gun,” China’s military, no longer answers reliably; when the “barrel of the pen,” the loyal secretaries and propagandists, become prisoners; when the red second generation and Xi Jinping reach a final break, this internal war, which may well continue through 2027, could mark the beginning of the CCP regime’s terminal unraveling. The question is no longer whom Xi will purge next. It is whether the machine can keep running at all. The winners, ultimately, will be those with the courage and foresight to abandon the sinking ship.
By Chen Jing
