On a frosty January morning under a gray and oppressive sky, one of China's most powerful men left for what was supposed to be an important meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and dozens of senior Communist Party officials, the WSJ reports.
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General Zhang Youxia, the most senior officer in the People's Liberation Army and a lifelong ally of President Xi Jinping, was on his way to the Central Party School in Beijing. Hundreds of senior Communist Party officials were to attend a “study session” with Xi himself – an event no top commander could afford to miss.
Zhang never arrived.
According to people close to the decision-making process in the Chinese government, security personnel sent by Xi intercepted the general on the way. Within hours, Zhang had disappeared to an unknown location. His home was searched. His son, a military researcher, was detained. When the meeting began the next day, one of the pillars of the Chinese military establishment had already been quietly removed.
Days before Zhang's arrest, Xi had secretly appointed a new commander to lead Beijing's elite security force. He installed a trusted person from the Shanghai Armed Police, thus breaking with the tradition of appointing an army officer. The unusual move, people close to the decision-making process say, is intended to ensure that the capital's defenses are led by a Xi loyalist rather than military networks associated with the purged general.
After Zhang's disappearance, the Chinese government did not inform the military leadership of why their top commander was absent from the Jan. 20 “study session” with Xi. Senior civilian party officials were informed within 24 hours of his arrest, but the military high command did not find out until hours before the news was broadcast worldwide on 24 January.
The Fall of “Big Brother”
His arrest on January 19 marked not only the spectacular downfall of a trusted confidant at the top of the military, but also a defining moment in Xi's consolidation of authority over the world's second-largest military.
Zhang was no ordinary general. He was, like Xi, the son of a revolutionary leader, and his family ties to Xi date back to the civil war that shaped modern China. Xi had once called him “elder brother”. When he took power in 2012 and launched sweeping reforms of the military, Zhang became both the executor and architect of his military vision.
Even after passing the normal retirement age, Zhang was promoted in 2022 to the rank of China's number one general, a clear signal of the trust he enjoyed.
Now, that confidence seems to have evaporated.
During a closed-door military briefing on Jan. 24, Zhang was accused of leaking critical technical data on China's nuclear program to the United States, according to earlier reports by The Wall Street Journal. Other charges allegedly included the formation of political cliques, abuse of authority and accepting bribes in exchange for promotion.
The allegations have not been independently verified. Official releases have been limited to the standard formula: Zhang is being investigated for “serious violations of discipline and the law.” A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense warned against “unfounded speculation”.
However, the wording in a later military editorial was suggestive. Zhang allegedly “trampled and seriously undermined the system of supreme responsibility vested in the president” – a rare phrase that suggests the issue may have been less about corruption than about loyalty.
An increasingly lonely leader at the top
Zhang's ouster caps more than a decade of purges that have reshaped China's military leadership.
After taking over the leadership of the party in 2012, Xi wasted no time in launching a radical reform of the military, convinced that it was plagued by corruption and structurally underequipped for modern warfare. He initiated an anti-corruption purge and abolished cumbersome military administrative fiefdoms in favor of centralized commands that report directly to the Central Military Commission he heads.
But a decade away, Xi is going much further.
Since 2023, Xi has dismissed five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission, the supreme body that oversees the armed forces. Instead of filling the vacant positions, he left them empty.
Currently, the commission consists essentially of Xi and a general known more as a political loyalist than a military strategist.
Analysts say the result is a profound transformation of the power structure. What was once a collegial decision-making body looks more and more like a personal secretariat.
The timing is not accidental. In 2023, Xi watched as Russian President Vladimir Putin faced a short-lived but shocking revolt by Yevgeny Prigozhin – a once-trusted ally. For Chinese leaders, the episode was a warning: a modernized military is no guarantee of formidable force if loyalty falters.
For Xi, the lesson was unequivocal: military modernization and technology are worthless without absolute obedience.
Dennis Wilder, a former US intelligence officer who has spent decades analyzing China's military and the corridors of power in Beijing, describes Zhang's dismissal as “the most stunning development in Chinese politics” since Xi came to power.
Wilder, now a professor at Georgetown University, notes that the purges are far from over, as Zhang and other senior officers are likely being interrogated in detention centers to extract confessions and reveal their wider patronage networks, suggesting a much deeper political purge. In Xi's view, people close to the decision-making process say, these networks pose a serious threat to his authority.
The nuclear shadow
Allegations of espionage add a strategic dimension.
In recent years, US researchers have publicly identified about 300 new Chinese missile silos in western regions. Later, US intelligence reports claimed that corruption issues had affected the functionality of some systems, including faulty silo lids.
Such revelations could have unsettled Beijing. If Western analysts could identify vulnerabilities in China's nuclear infrastructure, someone, Xi might have concluded, was providing insider information.
Whether or not Zhang was involved, the espionage charge turns a potential power struggle into a matter of national security.
Echoes of the Mao era
For historians, the parallels are obvious.
In 1971, Lin Biao, Mao Zedong's designated successor and nicknamed the “Invincible General,” allegedly attempted a coup before dying in a mysterious plane crash in Mongolia while fleeing the country. He had become too influential, too revered by the army. Mao's suspicion proved fatal.
The pattern seems to repeat itself: in systems dominated by a single leader, proximity to power can become dangerous.
Zhang's career in the strategic military region of Shenyang, where he built strong networks of loyalty, could eventually become a vulnerability.
As the traditional cradle of Chinese heavy industry, the region is considered the backbone for advanced naval and aerospace manufacturing. It is a vital hub for China's strategic missile forces. More specifically, the region is home to an important base of the Missile Forces, which manages a network of regional ballistic missiles.
Zhang's tenure in Shenyang spanned five years from 2007 to 2012, during which he built a type of loyalty in the military ranks that Xi apparently ultimately found unacceptable. Investigators specifically chose to stay in hotels in the city of Shenyang rather than military bases, where the general likely has a support network.
A moment of uncertainty
As the investigation continues, the Chinese military is facing an institutional vacuum at the highest level. Some analysts warn that by concentrating decision-making in the hands of one man, Xi risks isolating himself from professional military advice at a time when regional pressures, including around Taiwan, are mounting.
In a video address to the troops on February 11, Xi tried to calm spirits, praising the soldiers as “completely trustworthy”.
But the message underscores a deeper reality: In Xi's China, trust is conditional.
Zhang's fate is uncertain. But his demise marks a new stage in Xi's tenure – one where neither lifelong ties nor decades of loyalty offer any guarantees.
Jon Czin, a former senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, observed that while previous purges targeted political rivals or distant officials, Xi has moved to marginalize partners and “hunt his friends.”
Even if not proven, the espionage charge has a political role, redefining the power struggle as a matter of patriotism and ruling out any narrative of Zhang as a “loyal dissident,” Seong-Hyon Lee of the George HW Bush Foundation wrote in a recent article published by Sydney's Lowy Institute.
Such accusations provide a pretext for a trial behind closed doors.
The fall of Zhou Yongkang, the former domestic security czar, in 2014 provides a possible model. As the top “tiger” caught in Xi's anti-corruption campaign, Zhou was sentenced to life in prison in a secret trial where he was found guilty of bribery, abuse of power and divulging “party and state secrets”.
