Why Xi Silenced Liu Yazhou — and His Warning on Taiwan

So now let's talk about General De Yajjo. He's one of the PLA's most influential strategists. He married into the revolutionary elite and was the son-in-law of former PRC president. So under the protection of party elders networks, he rose quickly. He became an Air Force major general in 1996, a lieutenant general in 2003, and a full general in 2012. And by the way, he studied English in college. So for seven years he served as political commissar of the PLA's national defense university, the highest military educational institution in China. And that matters because the National Defense University is not just a school. It is the pipeline that produces China's future senior commanders. Many of today's top officers passed through its halls. Many were uh General Leadro's students and subordinates. So when Lou fell, it wasn't just one man being removed. It was an entire network being silenced. In 2017, before the age of 65, Leo was forced into early retirement. Unlike normal practice, he was not given an honorary position in the National People's Congress or the CPPCC. And then at the end of 2021, reports emerged that Leo was under investigation for corruption. Uh however, Hong Kong media outlet called Mingbao reported that his wife was safe and unaffected. And then in March 2024, information surfaced that General Leo had been sentenced to life imprisonment. It was shocking. It was like uh a bombshell at the time. However, to this day, there has been no official announcement. It's been more than 18 months. There has been no official announcement about his sentencing. He was not he was not expelled from the party. He was not stripped of military status. That alone makes his case one of the most bizarre major cases in the PLA history. Why was General Leo perceived to be so dangerous? Because he challenged Xiinping on Taiwan. He openly argued that Xiinping lacked the ability to command a Taiwan war. He said bluntly that Xiinping does not possess the qualities of a supreme commander. And long before Xiinping came to power, uh Leo had already laid out his thinking on the war in the Taiwan Strait. He wrote an essay around 2001, that's almost like 25 years ago, and it's called a review of the Battle of Kinman Island. uh he analyzed the PLA's failed 1949 assault on Kimman and dissected the causes of defeat and emphasized one lesson above all that is never fight an unprepared war that's his argument and now even after censorship and editing his essay circulated widely within the PLA even in the decade before Xiinping took power it caused enormous internal shock uh in that essay He he warned he said in any future operation against Taiwan we must be fully prepared for a third force to intervene suddenly that third force may be Japan but primarily it will be the United States. Now fast forward to today. Uh we know that Japan's new prime minister has openly stated that a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency and we Beijing reacted furiously and the provocation has has been escalated. It has not stopped. 25 years later many of the things that General Leo wrote in that essay was right. He also wrote, he said, "I can state with certainty if a Taiwan straight war breaks out, the United States will definitely intervene." He even predicted a US strategy. He said, "The US allows China to land more than 200,000 troops, then suddenly intervenes to seize air and sea superiority, block the Taiwan Strait, and join Taiwanese forces to annihilate PLA units that have lost ammunition and supply. This would deliver a massive political blow to China and shatter the fighting will of PLA forces on the mainland." This week, a Chinese political commentator, his name is Du Jun, wrote a piece about General Leo Yajou in a Taiwanese media called Up Media. So, here's what he said. Um, in China's grand strategy for the next 20 years, um, Leo argued that revol resolving Taiwan issue or unification issue required winning the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese people. It involves political reform on the mainland, fixing governance in Hong Kong and integration rather than conquest. You know, none of what he wrote was acceptable to Xiinping. So, in early 2023, reports emerged that the military issued internal orders to purge all harmful Liro content, his books, essays, speeches, inscriptions, and manuscripts. So if you search Leo Ya Joe's books today on Chinese internet, you're not going to find any. Someone told Mr. Du that the the his essay, a review of the Kimman battle was labeled by Xiinping as poisonous weeds, accusing Lou of corrupting military morale. Here's why morale is is the real fear. Because in that essay, he talked about history. He wrote that during the Kingman battle, more than 4,000 PLA soldiers were captured and about 3,000 were repatriated to the mainland in 1952. Instead of being welcomed home, they were expelled from the party and the military, sent back to farm, imprisoned. Some were even labeled as traders during the cultural revolution. They were persecuted again. So these people, these uh former PLA soldiers put it themselves. This is how they described themselves. They said, "Three days of bitter fighting in Taiwan or in Kingman, 30 years of suffering in China." Now think about this. If active duty soldiers fully absorb these facts, morale will collapse overnight. And that is why General Yo Yajjo is feared is so feared uh as a result of his reflection on the failure of the Kimman battle. Look at today right earlier in the month in Shanghai um I showed you a video showing active duty troops were deployed to suppress protests by retired veterans and and their families over housing benefits in Shanghai. I believe it was my Tuesday this Tuesday's program. Now let that sink in. active duty soldiers were ordered to crack down on veterans. And that was not an isolated case. On September 3rd and 8th, right after the military parade in Beijing, retired senior officers in Yinan staged sitins demanding promised resettlement jobs. Those promises were not kept. And then dozens of veterans from the Sano Vietnamese war protested after their monthly subsidy. Just 800 yen was withheld. It's not a lot of money. Not delayed. They're they were withheld. And last year the PLA's East Sea Fleet forcefully reclaimed welfare housing from uh demobilized soldiers in Shanghai. veterans responded by hanging protest banners uh inside the naval compound itself. So this is the core problem facing the PLA today. An army cannot maintain morale when veterans are beaten, benefits are clawed back, promises are broken, and soldiers are ordered to suppress their own uh predecessors and their commanders are being killed. Right? So if there's one thing that the CCP has completely wiped out in China, it's trust. And once soldiers stop believing, once they realize they can be discarded, just like the veterans and their commanders, the army doesn't need to lose a war to break. And that's the real danger facing this PLA