🔴 WATCH THE FULL EPISODE: https://ept.ms/4a8ZQQ2Show more Five of the seven men who oversaw China’s military have now been purged.
Among them were the last two senior commanders with real combat experience, CMC vice chairman Zhang Youxia and general Liu Zhenli.
Veteran China analyst Heng He argues this isn’t about corruption or alleged leaks of nuclear secrets, but a major political struggle for control of the military.
Heng believes Zhang Youxia helped senior CCP leaders curb Xi’s grip on the military last year. Now Xi is striking back—eliminating those who questioned both his authority and his plans to invade Taiwan.
Xi is staking his legacy on a war many of his own generals believe China isn’t ready to fight.
Amateurs are replacing professionals in controlling the war machine, and the situation will become more dangerous, Heng He argues. Show less
And I mean, as you said, right, we've got five out of seven of the top military leadership gone.
And obviously, it had to do with the fact that Xi felt threatened.
He was consolidating his power, from what I understand you're saying.
But at the moment, I mean, there is all these questions about what the strength of the Chinese military is, right?
It's been, they've been building a huge navy, they've been building in space, they've been expanding their nuclear capabilities dramatically.
I mean, way beyond anything that's official from what we know.
You know, this is a potent military force in the world, right?
And you're saying it's without leadership right now.
I mean, this sounds concerning.
Well, maybe it's good news for the world, not good news for Xi Jinping, because Xi Jinping is different.
I think his conflict with the military, part of the reason is Xi Jinping wants to be a great leader, you know, can be the same as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
As we talked last time, you know, he wants to be, he said Mao Zedong is the one to make China stand up.
And, you know, Deng Xiaoping makes China rich, and he will make China strong.
You know, but that's Chuang has no standard.
You cannot say this is strong, right?
So he has to do something to make his claim convincing.
Taiwan is the, I think it's the best target for him.
But the military has, the whole military has different idea.
Two major points.
One is the military is totally corrupted.
I'm not saying Zhang Yu Sha is not corrupted, you know, is corrupted.
But the reason to purge him is not corruption.
The reason to purge him is Zhang Yuxia helped the others took some of the power from him.
Another reason is Zhang Yu Xia has a totally different idea about taking over Taiwan.
I think these two military leaders who were purged, they were the only one who had a real battle, field battle experience.
Others doesn't have one.
And they are very professional, those two purged, Zhang Yu Sha and Liu Zheng Li.
They are very professional.
Even American military recognize they are very good professional military person and they are very good at communication, communicating with Americans.
Maybe that's one of the reasons to purge them.
So they have different ideas.
They thought this is a bad idea because the Chinese military is not ready to fight the war in the Taiwan Strait.
So I think that means Xi Jinping's ambition is conflict with the professional opinion about the war.
I think that's another reason Xi Jinping cannot get along with those two purged military personnel.
We might have created a more dangerous situation because of his ambition?
It could be.
But since the military is not willing to fight, so it will be, there's no wing issue for Xi Jinping.
But of course, it's more dangerous.
You know, the whole story from the beginning, you know, like in 2023, started with purging the rocket army, right?
And the military equipment and development department.
That's Zhang Yu Sha's territory.
So purge those is because Xi Jinping wants to take over Taiwan.
And he wants to, the military, you know, designed, he designed in 2015, you know, to switch the military from the inside to the outside fight.
But looks like it failed, you know, because the corruption, the military cannot fulfill his needs.
That's why he started to purge and purge Zhang Yu Sha's territory.
That's why Zhang Yuxia tried to fight back.
And last year, all the military top leaders purged were all belongs to the Xi Jinping faction.
So there's another reason we believe that the power switch last year happened.
And now Xi Jinping took over the power and got rid of only two reasonable military top leaders.
Another one left, we said two left in the military central committee.
Xi Jinping is the one.
Another one is promoted last October, last year, October.
It's Zhang Sengming.
But Zhang Sengming is a political leader of the military.
Amateurs in Charge00:01:00
He doesn't know anything about the military.
He doesn't know anything about war.
So he was a commissar person.
People call commissar person.
And that means now amateur replaced the professional.
So it's more dangerous.
I believe it's more dangerous.
But also the military power, the power for the war is much, much weak than before.
So they have no way to win a war.
The control the conflict is less possible.
With a professional, they can control the conflict.
But without the professionals, now it's amateurs in charge.
There will be more chance to have uncontrolled conflict.
But necessarily, they have a strong military power to win the war.