Epoch Times - Behind the Purges in China’s Military | Heng He
Aired: 2026-02-02
Duration: 06:55


=== Xi's Power Play (05:54) ===

[00:00:00]  It's an astonishing development, right?
[00:00:03]  And I mean, as you said, right, we've got five out of seven of the top military leadership gone.
[00:00:12]  And obviously, it had to do with the fact that Xi felt threatened.
[00:00:16]  He was consolidating his power, from what I understand you're saying.
[00:00:20]  But at the moment, I mean, there is all these questions about what the strength of the Chinese military is, right?
[00:00:28]  It's been, they've been building a huge navy, they've been building in space, they've been expanding their nuclear capabilities dramatically.
[00:00:38]  I mean, way beyond anything that's official from what we know.
[00:00:43]  You know, this is a potent military force in the world, right?
[00:00:47]  And you're saying it's without leadership right now.
[00:00:51]  I mean, this sounds concerning.
[00:00:54]  Well, maybe it's good news for the world, not good news for Xi Jinping, because Xi Jinping is different.
[00:01:02]  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.
[00:01:14]  As we talked last time, you know, he wants to be, he said Mao Zedong is the one to make China stand up.
[00:01:23]  And, you know, Deng Xiaoping makes China rich, and he will make China strong.
[00:01:31]  You know, but that's Chuang has no standard.
[00:01:35]  You cannot say this is strong, right?
[00:01:38]  So he has to do something to make his claim convincing.
[00:01:43]  Taiwan is the, I think it's the best target for him.
[00:01:46]  But the military has, the whole military has different idea.
[00:01:52]  Two major points.
[00:01:53]  One is the military is totally corrupted.
[00:01:57]  I'm not saying Zhang Yu Sha is not corrupted, you know, is corrupted.
[00:02:02]  But the reason to purge him is not corruption.
[00:02:05]  The reason to purge him is Zhang Yuxia helped the others took some of the power from him.
[00:02:14]  Another reason is Zhang Yu Xia has a totally different idea about taking over Taiwan.
[00:02:21]  I think these two military leaders who were purged, they were the only one who had a real battle, field battle experience.
[00:02:33]  Others doesn't have one.
[00:02:35]  And they are very professional, those two purged, Zhang Yu Sha and Liu Zheng Li.
[00:02:41]  They are very professional.
[00:02:43]  Even American military recognize they are very good professional military person and they are very good at communication, communicating with Americans.
[00:02:59]  Maybe that's one of the reasons to purge them.
[00:03:02]  So they have different ideas.
[00:03:04]  They thought this is a bad idea because the Chinese military is not ready to fight the war in the Taiwan Strait.
[00:03:15]  So I think that means Xi Jinping's ambition is conflict with the professional opinion about the war.
[00:03:26]  I think that's another reason Xi Jinping cannot get along with those two purged military personnel.
[00:03:36]  We might have created a more dangerous situation because of his ambition?
[00:03:42]  It could be.
[00:03:44]  But since the military is not willing to fight, so it will be, there's no wing issue for Xi Jinping.
[00:03:56]  But of course, it's more dangerous.
[00:03:59]  You know, the whole story from the beginning, you know, like in 2023, started with purging the rocket army, right?
[00:04:09]  And the military equipment and development department.
[00:04:16]  That's Zhang Yu Sha's territory.
[00:04:19]  So purge those is because Xi Jinping wants to take over Taiwan.
[00:04:25]  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.
[00:04:42]  But looks like it failed, you know, because the corruption, the military cannot fulfill his needs.
[00:04:51]  That's why he started to purge and purge Zhang Yu Sha's territory.
[00:04:57]  That's why Zhang Yuxia tried to fight back.
[00:05:00]  And last year, all the military top leaders purged were all belongs to the Xi Jinping faction.
[00:05:11]  So there's another reason we believe that the power switch last year happened.
[00:05:21]  And now Xi Jinping took over the power and got rid of only two reasonable military top leaders.
[00:05:33]  Another one left, we said two left in the military central committee.
[00:05:41]  Xi Jinping is the one.
[00:05:42]  Another one is promoted last October, last year, October.
[00:05:48]  It's Zhang Sengming.
[00:05:50]  But Zhang Sengming is a political leader of the military.

=== Amateurs in Charge (01:00) ===

[00:05:55]  He doesn't know anything about the military.
[00:05:57]  He doesn't know anything about war.
[00:06:00]  So he was a commissar person.
[00:06:03]  People call commissar person.
[00:06:06]  And that means now amateur replaced the professional.
[00:06:11]  So it's more dangerous.
[00:06:12]  I believe it's more dangerous.
[00:06:14]  But also the military power, the power for the war is much, much weak than before.
[00:06:24]  So they have no way to win a war.
[00:06:27]  The control the conflict is less possible.
[00:06:32]  With a professional, they can control the conflict.
[00:06:36]  But without the professionals, now it's amateurs in charge.
[00:06:43]  There will be more chance to have uncontrolled conflict.
[00:06:49]  But necessarily, they have a strong military power to win the war.