The string of purges in the PLA suggests an existential struggle between the old and new guard. And now there’s a clear winner.
On October 17, China announced the ouster from the Communist Party of General He Weidong, the second-highest ranking officer in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and a member of the 24-man Politburo, for corruption. His dismissal, and that of Admiral Miao Hua, are shocking.
President Xi Jinping had helicoptered He into the Central Military Commission (CMC) just three years ago and promoted Miao Hua in 2017 to rejuvenate the leadership of the military high command. Now He has become the first CMC vice chairman to be removed from power in over four decades. Moreover, the ouster follows an unprecedented number of dismissals and disappearance of senior military officers since mid-2023. In fact, amid the successive ousters, the CMC is now down to just four members.
My assessment is that this is a purge triggered by a power struggle between the CMC’s first-ranked vice chairman, Zhang Youxia, and the ambitious up-from-the-troops ordinary soldiers, He Weidong and Miao Hua.
Zhang represents the old, princeling elite of the PLA. His father was a Red Army hero of the 1920s and 1930s and was equal in stature to Xi Jinping’s father. Zhang Youxia built his military career on being a hero during the 1979 border war against the Vietnamese. My friends who have met him tell me he is a tough old soldier in the Maoist tradition: profane, entitled, and intolerant.
PLA General Zhang Youxia, pictured here during a 2017 meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, seems to have emerged victorious in the power struggles within China’s military.
American Buddhist Net 