In the stubborn cleanliness of the Army of China, Zhang Youxia It seemed like the last dam: due to position, biography and presidential favor. His fall this week represents the biggest earthquake in the military sector in half a century and he feels that no one is safe from this campaign against corruption who chased flies and tigers. Among the unleashed conjectures, some delirious, the certainty emerges that nothing and no one, not even the Army, escapes the reins of the party.
Zhang, 75, was already on the verge of a well-deserved retirement. The statement about his investigation, with the euphemistic formula of “serious violations of discipline and the law,” is a public ridicule. It also breaks the casuistry. A senior official often misses several public meetings for weeks or months until the party reveals that he or she has fallen from grace. The news, in this case, came just four days after his first absence.
His dismissal as vice president leaves the Central Military Commission (CCM) in cadre. It is traditionally made up of seven members, with Xi Jinping at the top. The next meetings, with only Xi and Zhang Shenminthey are expected to be calm. Several Chinese ministers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have been dismissed, so many that Lloyd Austinhis American counterpart, could barely learn their names. But the Minister of Defense in China is a formal position that assumes the representation of the body and relations with the press and its international counterparts. The leadership of the largest Army in the world corresponds to the CCM and the country’s leaders have taken care to also hold its presidency to avoid problems. Its emptying comes with a world in combustion.
Zhang is the highest-ranking general under investigation and a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo. He is also one of the few commanders who has gotten his boots muddy in combat. It was during the invasion of Vietnam that Beijing ordered in 1979 to punish it for having overthrown Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. “It’s time we teach them a lesson,” he said. Deng Xiaoping. The campaign was calamitous but Zhang returned with the reputation of a bold leader who would solidify his hierarchy.
red nobility
His ties with Xi seemed unbreakable. Both come from the rural province of Shaanxi and belong to the red nobility. His parents fought alongside Mao in the civil war against the nationalists and they extended family friendship. In Zhang Xi had his faithful ally for the urgent revolution in the Army. The president has insisted on the duty of exemplarity of its Armed Forces and requested that they be ready for combat. The first is related to the second: the party has always been concerned that the auction of positions will ruin the effectiveness of an Army to which it allocates millionaire funds. Xi deprived the establishment of the numerous linked businesses, a fertile ground for bribes, and has decimated its elites: twenty senior officials have been dismissed in the last two years. It has also undertaken the modernization of its armed forces, shifting from the Soviet model to the American one and prioritizing quality over quantity. Zhang contributed to all of this.
The surprise of his fall has been followed by rumors. The ‘Wall Street Journal’ suggests that leaked information about the nuclear arsenal to the United States. If true, and it is not a minor condition, Zhang would be a suicidal idiot. There has been no shortage of allusions to attempts to overthrow Xi and to shootings in Beijing that follow any high-profile dismissal. It is more reasonable to ask whether corruption or Xi’s loss of trust played a role. An editorial in the PLA newspaper suggested the latter: it accused the general of “trampling on the presidential authority” of the CCM and of “seriously undermining the party’s absolute leadership over the military.”
The medium points to a disloyalty with diffuse contours. “Was he not sufficiently competent with Xi’s orders or did he openly betray him? It is certain that there is dissatisfaction. Xi dismissed several military commanders months ago and I think he gave him time to make amends, but he did not do so,” says sinologist Xulio Ríos.
That editorial places the focus on the context: the party subjugates the Army as it previously subjugated the Government. For Ríos, the dismissal culminates two processes, the modernization of the Army undertaken in 2015 and the nuclear role of the party. “With the bankruptcy of the military leadership, Xi closes the debate on the Army and assures his loyalty to the party, which will direct the modernization of the Armed Forces and manage the immediate challenges. The party rules the gun and the Army will only be able to implement what is dictated to it. Any hint of dissonance has been pulverized.”
Xi knows that the Army did not always follow the party in China, although it is unknown whether Zhang ever questioned its guidelines or lacked enthusiasm for the party. fourth presidential term which must be approved in the 2027 congress. It is likely that his old friendship allowed him to speak to him with some freedom. From the replacements in the CCM it can be anticipated that they will not have it. They probably do not joyfully occupy those chairs either knowing the fate of their predecessors.
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