By Xiao Ran
Military purges and hollow orders: a regime problem, not a personnel problem
The downfall of Central Military Commission (CMC)—the Chinese Communist Party’s highest military command body—Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia, a career PLA general long seen as a pillar of the officer corps, and Liu Zhenli, then Chief of the PLA Joint Staff Department, has precipitated an abnormal and deeply revealing crisis inside the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), China’s armed forces. Multiple directives issued by the CMC have stalled at the grassroots level, meeting with widespread noncompliance.
Orders circulate, but are not executed. Public loyalty statements are withheld. Entire units respond with silence.
Sources close to the PLA report that confidence in senior leadership has sharply deteriorated, from commanding officers down to ordinary soldiers. Disaffection is no longer hidden. In private conversations, troops reportedly mock Xi Jinping, the CCP’s general secretary, state president, and commander-in-chief, signaling a collapse of reverence for the supreme authority itself.
This is not an isolated morale issue. Analysts argue that the latest round of military purges has exposed a systemic failure: an over-centralized, fear-driven command structure incapable of absorbing shocks. What appears on the surface as discipline is, in reality, institutional brittleness. When orders cease to function, power ceases to govern.
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Central Military Commission orders stall as grassroots units go silent
After the CCP—China’s ruling party since 1949—announced formal investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, multiple military insiders disclosed that a series of Central Military Commission directives sent to theater commands, the PLA’s regional war-fighting headquarters, and group armies encountered open resistance.
On January 24, the CMC General Office, its administrative secretariat, issued a document instructing all units to “maintain consistency with the Party Central Committee and the Central Military Commission,” requiring political study sessions and formal declarations of loyalty. In several theater commands, the order was ignored.
Some units refused to issue statements altogether; others did not organize internal study meetings at all.
A nearly identical directive was issued the following day. Nothing changed.
In the PLA—an institution long defined by rigid hierarchy and ritualized obedience—such “order hollowing” is unprecedented. Military sources describe the situation as junling kongzhuan: commands that circulate but no longer command.
An anonymous insider says resentment toward the Central Military Commission is spreading rapidly. At the grassroots level, soldiers reportedly refer to Xi Jinping as “Baozi,” a colloquial nickname mocking his public image. A family member of an officer in the Eastern Theater Command, responsible for Taiwan contingencies, confirmed that this sentiment is no longer isolated.
The implication is grave: in a wartime mobilization, units may delay, distort, or simply refuse to act.
Historically, Central Military Commission instructions triggered immediate, synchronized responses across commands and services. Today’s collective silence is widely interpreted as a direct negation of Xi Jinping’s personal authority—and a warning that the PLA’s command-and-control system may no longer function reliably under stress.
Heng He: extreme centralization produces a ‘leaderless system’
Political commentator Heng He, a U.S.-based Chinese dissident analyst, argues that the People’s Liberation Army is now trapped in what he calls a “leaderless system”—a paradox created by excessive centralization. Decision-making authority has been monopolized at the apex, while middle and lower ranks have been reduced to passive transmitters, stripped of judgment and initiative.
Under such conditions, repeated political purges generate paralysis rather than compliance. When political risk becomes omnipresent and unpredictable, actors at every level retreat into inaction. The system continues to move on paper, but loses the capacity to respond.
Heng warns that this structural weakness poses acute dangers in crises. Even if the PLA appears orderly during peacetime routines, its internal coordination and reaction speed may already be severely degraded. In the event of sudden conflict or internal disagreement, cascading paralysis becomes likely.
Worse, Heng argues, a vicious cycle has taken hold: grassroots resistance prompts tighter personal control; tighter control further erodes agency; the system becomes ever more dependent on one individual rather than institutional mechanisms. Stability becomes an illusion sustained by fear, not functionality.
Wang Dan: fear politics destroy execution from within
Democracy activist Wang Dan, a former 1989 Tiananmen student leader living in exile, sees the current paralysis as the inevitable result of long-term fear politics. Constant purges and shifting political red lines have taught grassroots officers one lesson above all: survival comes before obedience.
When any action can later be reclassified as a political offense, initiative disappears. Officers comply formally while avoiding substantive decision-making. Orders are “executed” in appearance only.
Over time, this produces structural inertia. The PLA’s overall efficiency declines. Central Military Commission directives fail to transmit quickly or coherently. National security becomes hostage to bureaucratic self-protection.
Wang emphasizes that the current wave of “cold treatment” and “collective silence” constitutes a form of passive resistance. It is not ideological rebellion, but defensive withdrawal. Yet the cumulative effect is devastating: an organization that cannot act decisively when it matters most.
At a deeper level, Wang argues, this reflects a long-maturing crisis within the CCP system itself. A high-pressure political environment is eroding the basic capacity to execute policy, pushing the regime toward institutional dysfunction.
Tang Hao: personal power and institutional decay form a closed loop
Commentator Tang Hao, a Taiwanese political analyst focused on CCP elite politics, places the crisis squarely within Xi Jinping’s governing model. Personalized power and institutional decay, he argues, now reinforce one another.
Repeated purges have shattered trust across the military and the broader party-state apparatus. Execution falters. In response, Xi tightens control further, relying ever more heavily on personal authority. The result is a closed loop of deterioration.
In this sense, Tang contends, Xi risks becoming the Chinese Communist Party’s “gravedigger”—not by consciously dismantling the system, but by governing in a way that steadily destroys its capacity to survive.
The investigations of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, and the backlash they triggered, expose a severe imbalance within the PLA’s internal structure. For decades, the military operated through a functional division between professional officers and political cadres, the latter responsible for Party control. The concentrated purge of the officer corps—symbolized by Zhang and Liu—has inflamed resentment among frontline commanders, sharply degrading the Central Military Commission’s authority.
Analysts warn that without strategic recalibration, the Central Military Commission could gradually lose effective control over roughly two million active-duty troops.
Tang Hao’s ‘three accelerants of CCP collapse’
Tang goes further, outlining what he calls the “three accelerants of CCP collapse.” First is Tui Bei Tu, a traditional Chinese prophetic text often cited in dissident discourse. Second is overseas Chinese-language media, which shape information flows beyond Party censorship. Third is Xi Jinping himself—the “chief accelerator,” intensifying crises across the economy, diplomacy, and military governance.
Xi may intend to preserve the Party, Tang argues, but his trajectory risks dragging it toward collapse—with himself buried alongside it.
A command system hollowed from the top
Sources inside the PLA say that the Central Military Commission’s effective core now consists of only Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin, a senior political discipline official overseeing military inspections. The removal of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli is widely viewed within the military as a targeted purge of the professional officer system.
Insiders report that this move is understood not as anti-corruption, but as political cleansing. The result has been a sharp erosion of trust in top-level decision-making.
The imbalance between political and military authority has fractured the command chain. With the officer corps under assault, the CMC’s ability to direct real-world operations is increasingly questioned.
Military scholars note that the Xi–Zhang Shengmin pairing lacks operational credibility: Zhang Shengmin’s career has been rooted in political discipline and supervision, not battlefield command, while actual combat authority still rests with frontline officers.
Analysts warn that unless Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli are released—or the purge logic reversed—the risk of losing control over the PLA will grow. The political and security costs, they caution, could far exceed the price of detaining a handful of generals.
Stability on display, crisis beneath
In the aftermath of the Zhang–Liu investigations, Xi Jinping has continued to appear at high-profile diplomatic events, projecting confidence and continuity. But Wang Dan, Heng He, and Tang Hao all argue that beneath this façade lies intensifying elite struggle and systemic risk.
Fear politics hollow out execution. Extreme centralization creates leaderless paralysis. Personalized power accelerates institutional decay. Together, these dynamics suggest that the CCP’s internal contradictions have moved beyond factional infighting and into a phase of structural crisis.
Military insiders warn that further deterioration could trigger coups, mutinies, or broader unrest. Grassroots resistance has already spread nationwide. Hollow orders and collective silence are no longer anomalies—they are symptoms of a system losing its grip.
Who is burying the Chinese Communist Party?
Upheaval at the top of the PLA reverberates far beyond barracks and command rooms. A weakening Chinese military directly affects China’s national security posture and regional stability.
Domestically, disaffection is increasingly visible through the “Three Withdrawals” movement, an overseas dissident campaign urging symbolic renunciation of Party affiliations. More than 457 million Chinese are reported to have withdrawn from CCP, Youth League, and Young Pioneer memberships—evidence, critics argue, of a profound collapse in popular legitimacy.
Internationally, governments and analysts are closely watching PLA command effectiveness, particularly amid tensions in the Taiwan Strait and along the China–India border. Internal instability heightens the risk of miscalculation, delayed responses, or sudden escalation.
Tang Hao argues that the broader information environment—shaped by prophetic narratives such as Tui Bei Tu and amplified by overseas Chinese media—feeds back into military morale and political psychology, creating a self-reinforcing crisis of belief. Wang Dan and Heng He warn that fear-driven paralysis and leaderless systems could prove catastrophic in real-world conflict.