Matthew Johnson
General Secretary Xi Jinping appears to have prevailed in the latest round of military purges in the Central Military Commission (CMC), but only by further dismantling the institutional safeguards that once stabilized elite politics—deepening, rather than resolving, long-term regime fragility.
The removal of generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli marks the elimination of the last residual chain of military authority not fully subsumed under the “CMC chairman responsibility system,” meaning that military command now begins and ends with Xi personally.
This consolidation does not alter near-term timelines on Taiwan, but it accelerates political drift in the People’s Republic of China toward a late Stalinist disequilibrium in which Xi’s personal control is maximized at the cost of orderly succession management, professional and expertise-based authority—exemplified by figures like Zhang Youxia—and tolerance for dissenting or corrective views within the leadership.
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