Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, two of the most powerful military leaders in China, are now officially in custody. Rumors have buzzed in the Chinese diaspora for days, but the speed still comes as a shock; usually there’s a far longer gap between the detention of leaders and the official announcement of their fate.
The crux of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political language is not what it says, but when it says it—and to whom. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mouthpieces have accused Zhang and Liu of having “seriously trampled on and undermined the system of ultimate responsibility resting with the [Central Military Commission] CMC chairman” and threatening “the Party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces.” These charges have little directly to do with corruption in the conventional sense, nor are they just about the military. They are political accusations, virtually identical to those leveled at former CMC Vice Chair He Weidong, who was purged last year.
Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, two of the most powerful military leaders in China, are now officially in custody. Rumors have buzzed in the Chinese diaspora for days, but the speed still comes as a shock; usually there’s a far longer gap between the detention of leaders and the official announcement of their fate.
The crux of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political language is not what it says, but when it says it—and to whom. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mouthpieces have accused Zhang and Liu of having “seriously trampled on and undermined the system of ultimate responsibility resting with the [Central Military Commission] CMC chairman” and threatening “the Party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces.” These charges have little directly to do with corruption in the conventional sense, nor are they just about the military. They are political accusations, virtually identical to those leveled at former CMC Vice Chair He Weidong, who was purged last year.
These arrests are political, first and foremost; anti-corruption is just a cloak in which the politics are wrapped. Anti-corruption has become an easy excuse in Chinese politics, but once every charge against officials is forced into this frame, it inevitably collides with a community of power that itself is saturated with corruption.
This isn’t to deny that those under investigation are often genuinely corrupt; it’s to say that once anti-corruption turns into a tool of political legitimacy, it is logically destined to tear the power bloc itself apart. Corruption in China’s party-state is a byproduct of how power operates: permits, approvals, land, finance, projects, regulation—almost everything can be monetized. When power is highly concentrated, beyond external oversight, and resources are largely distributed by the administration, power becomes driven to cash out.
Chinese President Xi Jinping believes that if he keeps pushing his anti-corruption campaign relentlessly, he can transform a bureaucracy and military tainted by corruption into a corps of moral exemplars, with every official exercising power properly and doing things by the book.
These demands that every official be spotless may be politically unassailable, but in reality, they are almost impossible to make real. And since they can’t be realized, instead people have to keep being arrested. Anti-corruption becomes the continual remolding of the ruling coalition itself, which over time is inevitably weakening—and will ultimately rip apart—the structural foundation of Xi’s rule.
I used to propose three bedrock assumptions of Xi’s purges: Politburo members were generally not touched; “princelings”—the sons, like Xi, of leaders themselves—in high office were generally not touched; and retired members of the Politburo Standing Committee were generally not touched. These tacit assumptions were, in effect, a kind of fence that held things together. But now these rules are falling apart. That all but told the entire apparatus that the old rules of thumb—“the higher the rank, the safer you are,” “the closer the relationship, the more protection you enjoy”—were no longer reliable. That leaves officials with no way to assure themselves that others might fall but they are safe.
For Xi, moving against the military’s most core players—especially given that Zhang, also the son of one of the People’s Republic of China’s founding figures, was his childhood companion and the two families’ ties go back decades—looks very much like a display of authority. It denies the existence of “exceptions” in anti-corruption, effectively proclaiming to the party and the PLA: If I can move against those closest to me, who will dare challenge me?
But Xi’s strength will also be his undoing. After so many years of anti-corruption purges, the highest leaders are still falling in droves. This doesn’t make the campaign look successful; it makes entrenched corruption look like part of the system, and Xi ineffective in removing a poison that runs to the bone.
After more than 12 years in power, the targets of anti-corruption are also people Xi chose himself. They were the ones he trusted for years and elevated to the most critical posts. If Xi is so committed to anti-corruption, why does he keep giving the most crucial positions to corrupt officials? This punctures Xi’s carefully cultivated image as a leader. Officials no longer believe that loyalty equals safety. Instead, they come to fear the next cut, and the glue that binds the party together shifts from trust to fear, from cooperation to mutual suspicion.
Once fear becomes the shared psychological climate, the structure of power changes in subtle but profound ways, fracturing and atomizing. Principle never held the system together; the fundamental glue was the exchange of interests and resources, and a shared understanding of where the red lines were. The first gives the system stickiness; the second gives it predictability. As anti-corruption reaches the level of Politburo members, princelings, and childhood friends of Xi, those rules are falling apart. With the boundaries gone, bureaucrats are shifting instinctively to risk avoidance: Don’t sign off on anything you don’t have to, don’t take responsibility if you can avoid it, never volunteer unless you absolutely must.
What Xi can see is neater applause, more uniform messaging, louder vows of loyalty. What he cannot see is hesitation throughout the decision chain, delays in implementation, the disappearance of truthful information, and a bureaucracy collectively playing dead. Officials understand the cold logic: The issue is no longer whether you did something wrong, but whether you will be needed, at some moment, to be the wrong person in the right place. The survivors will not be the cleanest, but the best at hiding.
State capacity is hollowed out through this collective risk aversion: When the economy slows, no one dares to reform; when social problems erupt, no one dares to take charge; under external pressure, no one dares to decide; in military modernization, no one dares to innovate. The machine may look stable, but it grows slower and more brittle. This is the precise opposite of what Xi set out to achieve when he launched his sweeping anti-corruption drive.
The consequences of Xi’s move against Zhang and Liu are likely to surface most clearly in the personnel arrangements for the 21st Party Congressdue to be held late next year. This will not be a simple leadership transition, but a redraw of the load-bearing map of the power structure.
Safety itself will become a principle in selecting officials, including military leaders. That includes whether an official’s background is complicated, whether their circles are independent, whether their resources are too solid, whether their family is controllable, and whether they have the capacity to form a sub-bloc of their own. That makes the most capable officials the most risky; the incompetent, replaceable, and uncharismatic are safer. Policy becomes more conservative and execution more mechanical, while the leadership becomes more isolated and its grasp of reality deteriorates.
One final line has not yet been crossed, and I tend to believe it will be preserved. Retired members of the Politburo Standing Committee are generally not touched (mysterious incidents aside), which is the last symbolic line of stability. But the survival of this rule highlights the destruction of the others: The true boundary of safety has been redrawn around whether someone affects the current power structure.
Caution has become the norm. But under conditions of extreme political pressure, one cannot even rule out more drastic survival choices—for instance, a senior official who anticipates arrest choosing to seek asylum abroad during a foreign trip rather than return. Whether this happens depends on many technical constraints. But once the possibility enters elite expectations, it is enough to intensify mutual suspicion and tighten controls. If it were to happen, the shock would trigger a search for a scapegoat down the security chain and a cascade of tremors—an outright political earthquake.
Anti-corruption has now reached the point where the real question is no longer, “Who else can be taken down?” but, “After reaching this level, how can the system still function?” If the only answer is tighter control, more frequent cutting, and an ever longer season of universal anxiety, then the 21st Party Congress will not only determine Xi’s next personnel layout; it will determine how much resilience this highly strung power bloc has left.
It is increasingly difficult for Xi to find people who are safe, capable, and still willing to take responsibility. And so, the challenge he faces may no longer be who will dare oppose him but something more troublesome: The machine is still there—but who will dare keep it moving forward?
