The January 24 purge of Zhang Youxia, China’s top general, was a Shakespearean moment in Chinese politics. Even after a decade of high drama in the People’s Liberation Army, the decision by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to remove Zhang from the PLA’s top governing body, the Central Military Commission (CMC), suggests a new level of intrigue. Xi and Zhang have known each other for decades: Xi’s father and Zhang’s father were comrades-in-arms during China’s ferocious civil war, and Zhang was widely seen as Xi’s closest ally in the army’s high command. As recently as 2022, after a flurry of purges of other senior leaders, Xi not only allowed Zhang to stay in office past the unofficial retirement age but also promoted him to the top position for a military officer. A relationship that long and deep is valuable in any setting, but especially in the vicious, low-trust world of Chinese politics.

Zhang’s dismissal is thus the ultimate illustration of just how little trust Xi has in the PLA. As we argued in Foreign Affairs last August, “Xi wants to ensure he can employ violence with confidence, but Xi’s confidence seems to be the rarest and most precious commodity for an otherwise well-resourced military.” But Zhang’s unceremonious dismissal also illustrates the depths of Xi’s ruthlessness in managing the PLA. It is one thing for a leader to show no mercy to his enemies; it is quite another for him to be so pitiless with his friends.

There is a lot of speculation about what Zhang did—or didn’t do—to provoke Xi’s ire as well as what the purge means for the Chinese leader’s grasp on power and his military objectives vis-à-vis Taiwan and the United States. While those elements of the saga may reveal themselves in time, what is clear now is Xi’s belief that power exists in its exercise. In making a public spectacle of pushing Zhang aside, Xi has laid bare a defining feature of his political style. No one is safe—not even those with deep personal connections to Xi. As PLA Daily, the military’s official periodical, stated the day after Zhang’s ouster, Xi’s campaign has “no off-limit zones.” Even by the standards of Xi’s unsparing rule, this is a seismic shift in Chinese politics.

The outstanding question for many observers is why Xi made this move against Zhang now. In its official account, PLA Daily declared that Zhang was removed for fueling “political and corruption problems that threaten the party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces and undermine the party’s governance foundation,” and his actions “caused immense damage to the construction of combat capabilities.” Given that corruption in the PLA is endemic, these claims are rightly seen by many outside observers as a pretext for removing........

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