In order to purge his top generals, Chinese leader Xi Jinping handed over command of the armed forces to one man – himself. Now, his vision alone will determine the course of Beijing’s escalating confrontation with Taiwan.
Chinese President Xi Jinping. (file image)The arrest of Gen. Zhang Yuxia, a close ally and childhood friend the Chinese leader calls “big brother,” removes any domestic authoritative voice that could slow Xi’s hand on any moves against Taiwan, the democratic, self-governing island that Beijing claims as part of its territory.
Time is critical. The Chinese military is racing toward a 2027 deadline that Xi has set for “modernization,” often interpreted as preparation for a Taiwan contingency.
An imminent invasion of Taiwan, however, is now less likely, foreign-policy and military analysts say, now that he has purged five of the six senior generals he picked to lead the military just three years ago. These analysts said Xi was moving toward a campaign designed to break Taipei’s resolve not to fire a shot.
Analysts say Beijing will increasingly lean on tactics that fall below the threshold of open conflict. These include relentless exercises intended to simulate naval and air blockades of Taiwan, demonstrating the blunt force behind Beijing’s psychological attacks.
“Right now Xi’s approach is a broader coercive campaign that combines military posture with economic and cyber pressure,” said Laura Rosenberger, a senior national-security official in Taiwan under former President Joe Biden and a top American diplomat.
Beijing is also opening new fronts through “legal warfare” using domestic Chinese law to target Taiwanese officials and increasing the risk of Taiwanese people traveling to the mainland, as activities once considered routine political expression may now be reclassified as criminal offenses.
Taiwanese officials say China is launching cyber attacks aimed at crippling Taiwan’s energy and healthcare infrastructure. Meanwhile, Beijing’s goal of intimidating countries like Japan is to contain Taiwan diplomatically.
The message: China’s military leadership may be in flux, but Xi’s focus on Taiwan remains, and his ability to strangle Taiwan’s supply lines and erode its economic resilience remains unrelenting.
Xi’s intention to remove Zhang – announced on January 24 – remains a mystery.
A closed-door briefing of Chinese military leaders said Zhang had leaked nuclear secrets to the United States and accepted bribes — allegations serious enough to justify ending the career of such a senior official, although the Communist Party does not always say, even its own leadership, the full or true story behind Xi’s actions. At a press briefing on Thursday, a spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry warned against baseless speculation and referred to the original announcement of an investigation into Zhang’s alleged violations of party discipline and state law.
Another emerging theory is that Zhang and Xi disagree about when the Chinese military should prepare for war with Taiwan. Xi wanted the military to “achieve a joint operational capability to attack Taiwan by 2027, while Zhang clearly put the goal closer to 2035,” said K.K., an analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Tristan Tang’s January 26 analysis of official records said
After Zhang’s arrest, Tang noted, an editorial in the military’s flagship newspaper accused Zhang of “severely trampling” the military chairman’s system of responsibility — the principle that codifies the absolute command of Xi, the chairman, over military rule. This choice of words, Tang said, suggests that Zhang’s approach is “a political challenge that has undermined Xi’s authority.”
A credible military option remains the backbone of Xi’s approach, Rosenberger said, because “it provides the leverage necessary to undermine Taipei’s resolve.”
The Trump administration has maintained that it does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and will maintain a military posture to maintain it.
Other analysts say any potential policy rift between Zhang and Xi could be over how to man, train and equip the military.
“For the US deterrence strategy to be effective, we need to surround Xi Jinping with competent generals who will advise him objectively,” wrote Drew Thompson, now a Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam is a former Pentagon strategist at the School of International Studies, in a recent analysis.
Undermining the military’s top decision-making body, Thompson noted, is Xi’s command and control would have a harder time with , which would create the operational risk of one leader trying to command a million-man army through a “one-man committee”.
“Without Zhang Yuxia,” Thompson said, “the risk of miscalculation increases.”
According to people consulting Chinese officials, Zhang’s removal reflects a higher level of confidence in the prospects for “reunification” than Xi has shown at any time since taking power in 2012. This confidence is reinforced by his absolute control over the military.
It also stems from a fundamental reassessment of Washington’s resolve. Beijing sees Trump as having little appetite for a costly military intervention in the Taiwan Strait.
Even the Trump administration’s recent $11.1 billion arms sale to Taiwan, the largest in history, has been interpreted in Beijing as a “defense industry promotion” rather than a security commitment, said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Washington, D.C.-based Stimson Center.
“Beijing is convinced that they will never see a US president more indifferent to the Taiwan Strait than Trump,” Sun said.
Xi sees his upcoming meeting with Trump this year as a strategic opening to further erode Taipei’s confidence. By offering potential trade concessions, such as a multibillion-dollar order for Boeing aircraft, Xi aims to secure the kind of transactional statements from Trump that could sow doubts about the US commitment to Taipei’s defense.
However, administration officials say the White House is focused on blunting Beijing’s aggression with a “denial defense” anchored in the First Island Chain—the string of islands stretching from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines that act as a natural barrier to Chinese naval expansion.
Additionally, the recently signed US-Taiwan “Silicon Agreement” seeks to restore advanced semiconductor manufacturing, which officials say simultaneously strengthens Taiwan’s security. By hardwiring the island’s industrial ecosystem into the American economy, they say, the deal effectively transforms Taiwan’s high-end silicon output into an essential US national security asset.
Overall, by raising the costs of military action for China, U.S. officials say Washington aims to prevent Chinese military aggression—and regional hegemony—without engaging in unnecessary conflict.
Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com
