Silenced by Xi The Secret Power Struggle Behind Liu Yazhou s Disappearance

Beneath the Chinese Communist Party's familiar anti-corruption facade, the case of Liu Yazou stands out as an anomaly. No official statement, no public verdict, no media campaign meant to serve as a warning. This silence suggests that it is not merely a criminal case, but very likely a flashpoint in a strategic power struggle between Liu Yazou and Xi Jinping within the military. On one side is Xi Jinping, a man pursuing absolute power and harboring ambitions to use force to unify Taiwan. On the other is Liu Yazou, a full general and strategic thinker who dared to lay bare the military's real limitations and warn of the catastrophic cost of an unprepared war. When the National Defense University was downgraded, when Liu Yazou's ideas were branded poisonous weeds, and when he effectively vanished from the public sphere, the question ceased to be what crime he committed. Instead, it became what did he say that Xi Jinping could not tolerate? Let's explore this question in today's program. The Mysterious Case of Liu Yazhou Among the National Defense University leaders who later fell from power, the case of Liu Yazhou is arguably the most consequential and also the most secretive. Born in 1952, Liu Yazhou is the son-in-law of Li Xiannian, a former president of the Chinese communist regime. Under the protection of revolutionary elite family networks, he was promoted to Major General in the Air Force in June 1996. In 2002, Liu was selected by Jiang Zemin to attend the National Defense University's Senior Training Program for officers at the Corps level and above. Known within the PLA as the Dragon Class, the program admitted only a handful of top candidates. Liu was one of just three Air Force generals chosen. He was promoted to Lieutenant General in 2003 and to Full General in July 2012. However, in early 2017, before reaching the customary retirement age of 65, Liu stepped down early from his post as political commissar of the National Defense University. Contrary to convention, he was not subsequently assigned any position in the National People's Congress or the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Reports emerged in late 2021 that Liu was under investigation. In March 2023, Hong Kong's Ming Pao reported that he was suspected of using foundations and associations as fronts to amass enormous wealth, amounting to serious corruption. His wife Li Xiaolin, the daughter of Li Xiannian, was said to be safe and unaffected. In March 2024, rumors circulated that Liu Yazhou had been sentenced to life imprisonment. Yet unlike the highly publicized cases of Fang Fenghui and Zhang Yang, who died by suicide, or the recent open purges of Xi Jinping's close associates such as Heiwei Dong and Miao Hua, the Liu Yazhou case has to this day been accompanied by no official information whatsoever. A Controversial Figure The Chinese Communist Party's National Defense University was established in January 1986 through the merger of the Military Academy, the Logistics Academy, and the Political Academy. It is responsible for training senior command officers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as for research on strategy and defense modernization, and is widely regarded as the military's highest academic institution. Following Xi Jinping's military reforms, the university was restructured in July 2017, incorporating the former National Defense University along with the Nanjing and Xi'an Political Academies, the Academy of Arts, the Logistics Academy, the Shijiazhuang Army Command Academy, the Armed Police Political Academy, and parts of the Equipment Academy. Three military academies report directly to the Central Military Commission, the National Defense University, the Academy of Military Sciences, and the National University of Defense Technology. Before the reforms, the first two were ranked at the military region level, while the latter was one rank lower. After the reforms, all three were downgraded by one level. Notably, the restructuring and downgrading of the National Defense University coincided with Liu Yazhou's quiet departure from the military. Among the university's leaders, Liu Yazhou served the longest, holding the post of political commissar for seven years. The university has long been a pipeline for mid- and senior-level military talent, and many of today's top commanders are alumni. Some were Liu's students or former subordinates. Known for his flamboyant personality, Liu's tenure also marked what many described as the university's golden age. During this period, Liu frequently delivered internal speeches on military anti-corruption, reform, and political loyalty. Videos and transcripts circulated widely. In a Teacher's Day speech on September 8, 2016, he mentioned a young instructor who died from overwork, and in other recorded talks he was seen choking back tears. On July 6, 2016, at a seminar studying Xi Jinping's July 1st speech, Liu recounted remarks allegedly made by former Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Xu Kaihu before his death, that Guobaxiang's problems were more serious than his own, and that among full generals at the military region level, only two had not given him money, Liu Yuan and Liu Yazhou. Liu notably spoke of giving bribes, not taking bribes, and did not claim personal innocence. His remarks also implicitly suggested that current CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Yuxia had once given money to Xu. For years, Liu was embroiled in ideological controversy and targeted by mainland China's left wing. After his downfall in 2023, the leftist website Red Culture published repeated attacks accusing him of promoting universal values such as human rights, democracy, and freedom, branding him an ambitious and conspiratorial figure. Liu did display liberal leanings. In a 2010 interview, he said that a transition from authoritarian to democratic politics within 10 years was inevitable, and that any system denying citizens freedom and suppressing creativity was doomed to collapse. However, after Xi Jinping came to power, Liu appeared to pivot, throwing his support behind the anti-American film Silent Contest as a gesture of political loyalty. Released in 2013, the film claimed the United States was infiltrating China on multiple fronts to overthrow its system. It was praised by nationalists and the left, criticized by others as Cold War-era thinking, and later banned for unclear reasons. After Liu's downfall, even amid anti-U.S. political needs, authorities have shown no interest in reviving the film. Liu Yazhou's works labeled poisonous weeds in the military. Although Liu Yazhou has been imprisoned, he has not been formally expelled from the Communist Party or stripped of his military status. This does not so much suggest that Xi Jinping was showing deference to the entrenched networks of revolutionary elite families. Rather, it more likely reflects Xi's lingering apprehension and fear of backlash within the military, prompting him to avoid handling the case openly. It is precisely this unusual restraint that has made the Liu Yazhou case one of the most bizarre major cases in the history of the Chinese Communist regime. What makes the Liu Yazhou case so exceptional may lie in the fact that he displeased Xi Jinping during strategic discussions over the use of force against Taiwan. The scholar Yuan Hongbing, now living in exile in Australia, has pointed out that Liu Yazhou believed Xi Jinping lacked the capacity to command a war in the Taiwan Strait, and that it was precisely this assessment that led to Liu's political purge. Yuan stated bluntly, Xi Jinping does not possess the talent of a supreme commander. After joining the military, Liu Yazhou rose to prominence through his military novels and frequent appearances as a strategic thinker. He was the author of the nine-volume collected works of Liu Yazhou. His essay A Review of the Kinmen Campaign, often referred to as The Battle of Kinmen, largely completed around 2001, laid bare the entire course of the People's Liberation Army's failed assault on Kinmen in October 1949. The work reflected critically on the causes and lessons of that defeat, emphasizing the principle of never fighting a war without adequate preparation. Even after being abridged and edited, the essay circulated widely within the military for nearly a decade before Xi Jinping came to power, causing a major stir. In a review of The Kinmen Campaign, Liu warned, if we engage Taiwan militarily in the future, we must be prepared to deal with the sudden intervention of a third force. He added, that third force could be Japan, but it would mainly be the United States. Today, as Japan's new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, continues Shinzo Abe's assertion that a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency, the Chinese communist authorities have reacted sharply time and again, developments that in some measure validate Liu Yazhou's earlier prediction. In the same work, Liu further stated, I can say with certainty that once a war breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, the United States will definitely enter the conflict. He went on to predict what he called the U.S. military's third option. The United States would allow China to complete a landing with more than 200,000 troops, then intervene suddenly to seize control of the air and sea, impose a blockade on the Taiwan Strait, and coordinate with Taiwan's forces to encircle and annihilate Chinese troops that have been cut off from ammunition and supplies. This option would deal China an enormous political blow, and to a considerable extent, shake and destroy the fighting will of the remaining Chinese forces on the mainland. In the author's view, Liu Yazhou was not opposed to the use of force against Taiwan per se. However, in the eyes of the Maoist left in mainland China, such statements were seen as boosting the enemy's morale. Xi Jinping, who harbors ambitions to use force against Taiwan at any cost, was therefore very likely deeply displeased. In his essay China's Grand Strategy for the Next 20 Years, Liu Yazhou proposed that resolving the Taiwan issue required winning the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese people, advancing political reform on the mainland, addressing governance problems in Hong Kong, and pursuing the integration rather than conquest of Taiwan. He introduced concepts such as one country, two systems of governance, and divided but not separated, united but not absorbed. These ideas were, of course, not what Xi Jinping wanted to see. Hence why, in recent years, Hong Kong has been transformed by the Chinese Communist Party into one country, one system. Reports have indicated that in late February 2023, the military issued a notice requiring the elimination, by March, of harmful information related to Liu Yazhou, including books, newspapers, magazines, articles, handwritten materials, and speeches associated with him. On December 7th of this year, the author searched for keywords such as Liu Yazhou, collected works of Liu Yazhou, and Liu's requiem of the jiazi year on platforms including Dangdang, Kongfs, Confucius-used books, and Xinhua Bookstore, but found no results. Liu Yazhou's manuscripts and writings had exerted a profound influence on the middle-aged and younger generations within the People's Liberation Army. An observer close to Beijing's political circles revealed that a review of the Kinmen campaign was once labeled by Xi as poisonous weeds and that Liu Yazhou himself was accused of bewitching minds and undermining military morale. After Liu Yazhou's downfall, open discussion of military strength and national power became a taboo subject. Liu Yazhou's Part of the lasting value of a review of the Kinmen campaign lies in how it exposes uncomfortable truths. During the Kinmen battle, more than 4,000 PLA soldiers were captured. In 1952, Taiwan repatriated about 3,000 of them to the mainland by fishing boats. All were expelled from the party and the military and sent back to farm. Some were labeled traitors and sentenced. During the Cultural Revolution, every one of them was publicly denounced, farmers included. As they later said themselves, After 1983, policy rehabilitation amounted to little more than modest financial compensation and nominal restoration of party and military status upon demobilization. Many had already died from hunger, illness, persecution, or old age. The survivors were all in their 70s, hair completely gray, their lives effectively destroyed. One example was Chen Jiwen, an assistant instructor in an assault unit. Captured but unbroken, he organized resistance in a POW camp, yet upon return was branded a traitor. Only in 1983 was his party membership restored after a retrial. After more than 30 years of injustice, he died suddenly of a heart attack from emotional shock. Villagers mourned, saying, These facts lay bare the Chinese Communist regime's brutality and utter disregard for human dignity. Simply allowing soldiers to know this history would be enough to shatter military morale. Today, Chinese veterans face severe difficulties defending their rights. As noted earlier, the treatment of demobilized soldiers reflects the status of those still in uniform. Even when the families of active duty soldiers suffer injustice at home, seeking redress is extraordinarily difficult. This is a systemic problem. In recent years, the PLA has flaunted its power in the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the Taiwan Strait, projecting arrogance and overconfidence. Yet through the Kinmen Campaign, Liu Yazhou directly identified the CCP's chronic flaw, underestimating the enemy. In a review of the Kinmen Campaign, he issued what many see as stark warnings to China's top leadership. Today's Taiwanese military is no longer Chiang Kai-shek's army, and Taiwan is no longer Kinmen. Add to that the natural barriers. Warfare in the Taiwan Strait would be 10,000 times more difficult than at Kinmen. It is not Taiwan alone defending Taiwan, but the entire West. Civilian boats are unreliable. Popular sentiment cannot be exploited. History teaches us that when the overall direction is wrong, even callous, brave, and loyal warriors will only spill blood in vain, left to look up at heaven in sorrow. Over the past two years, a series of generals personally promoted by Xi Jinping have fallen in succession, showing that corruption in the PLA has by no means been eradicated. Resentment among lower-ranking troops is intense, morale is unstable, and if war were to break out, mutiny could erupt at any time. Combined with China's economic downturn and rising social tensions, Liu Yazhou's warnings may well prove prophetic. As for Taiwan, even with Western support, it should remember that heaven helps those who help themselves. From another angle, Liu Yazhou's old writings may still be worth revisiting in Taipei. What do you think about Liu Yazhou? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you, and see you next time.