On 24 January 2026, Chinese state media announced that Zhang Youxia—vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the body that controls China’s armed forces, and widely considered Xi Jinping’s closest military ally—was under investigation for “serious violations of discipline.” Zhang had known Xi since childhood. He was one of the few senior Chinese generals with actual combat experience, having fought in the 1979 war with Vietnam. He had overseen China’s major weapons programs for over a decade. If anyone appeared safe, it was him.
He wasn’t.
Since taking power in 2012, Xi has conducted continuous purges—under the language of anti-corruption and rectification—across the core power-bearing institutions of the Chinese system. The consequence is the consolidation of fear, the erosion of competence, and the brittling of the system from within.
Consider the breadth of what Xi has targeted since 2012.
Party elite. In October 2022, the world watched as former president Hu Jintao was physically escorted from the closing ceremony of the 20th Party Congress. The 79-year-old appeared confused and reluctant as aides lifted him from his seat—directly beside Xi—and guided him out of the Great Hall of the People while foreign cameras rolled. No public explanation was given. The incident was scrubbed from the domestic internet within hours.
The security apparatus—police, state security, courts, procuratorates—underwent multiple waves of “education and rectification.” Zhou Yongkang, former security czar and Politburo Standing Committee member, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a secret trial in 2015—the highest-ranking official prosecuted since the Cultural Revolution. State television showed him white-haired and bowed.
The military has undergone at least two major purge waves. The first (2014–2017) removed former Central Military Commission vice-chairmen Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong. Xu died of bladder cancer in custody in 2015 before trial; Guo received a life sentence in 2016. They had controlled military promotions for a decade. The second wave (2023–present) has been broader still, decapitating the Rocket Force—China’s nuclear and ballistic missile command—in 2023, expelling nine generals from the Central Committee in October 2025—including CMC vice-chairman He Weidong, the first to be expelled since 1967—and now reaching Zhang Youxia himself.
Private capital came under assault from 2020. Jack Ma, once China’s richest man and the face of its entrepreneurial success, criticised financial regulators in October 2020. Days later, authorities pulled the $37 billion IPO of his fintech company Ant Group. Ma disappeared from public view. When he resurfaced three months later—via a brief video message to rural teachers—he looked diminished. Only in early 2025 did he reappear at a government event, applauding Xi’s arrival. His net worth had halved—from $61.7 billion to approximately $30 billion.
Culture and media faced parallel rectification. In August 2021, actress Zhao Wei—one of China’s biggest stars, worth billions, with 86 million Weibo followers—was erased from the Chinese internet overnight. Her name was scrubbed from credits. Her films disappeared from streaming platforms. Her social media accounts vanished. She now lives in exile in France. In December 2025, she attempted a livestream appearance—it was shut down as soon as she appeared on screen.
Now imagine an Australian parallel. The Prime Minister removes the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank overnight. The Chief of the Defence Force disappears. Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest are placed under investigation and their public profiles erased.
What signal does this send to everyone else operating in those spaces? Not confidence. Not stability. It breeds sycophancy, institutional paralysis, and moral rot.
Purges also degrade institutional capacity. The Rocket Force has now had its senior leadership removed twice in a decade. Whatever corruption existed in weapons procurement, the solution has created its own problem: a strategic nuclear force whose command structure has been repeatedly hollowed out.
Authoritarian systems are opaque; dysfunction accumulates invisibly. Authoritarian incentive structures are perverted; competence becomes dangerous.
Under Xi, the Chinese system may be more dysfunctional and more brittle than under Hu. If this is the case, it will remain invisible until the system is stress-tested. A Taiwan contingency would be such a test. So would a serious economic downturn.
Xi has extraordinary power. The CCP is not about to collapse. But neither is it the disciplined, high-functioning machine that its own propaganda portrays.
An officer corps that has watched multiple generations of senior leaders purged is not optimised for aggressive initiative in combat. A bureaucracy operating under permanent fear is prone to over-compliance, not sophisticated strategy.
The permanent purge is one of the few constants in a system that guarantees permanence to no one. It does not signify strength. For those who must deter or outlast China under CCP rule, the permanent purge may prove an expedient ally.