Pt-1: THE FALL OF GENERAL ZHANG YOUXIA AND THE LOGIC OF CONTROL
On January 24, 2026, China’s Ministry of National Defence announced that Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), was under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law.” The wording was formulaic. The target was not. Zhang was one of the most senior uniformed officers in the People’s Liberation Army and, until that announcement, one of the last figures widely believed to have both the stature and personal access to provide Xi Jinping with unvarnished military advice.
Zhang’s removal did not come without warning. Beginning in mid-2023, overseas Chinese media, analysts, and some foreign reporters began noting his absence from expected appearances and internal meetings. Similar patterns preceded earlier purges within the PLA Rocket Force and procurement systems in 2023 and 2024, where senior commanders disappeared for months before corruption charges were made public. The sequence has become familiar under Xi’s rule: silence, disappearance, then announcement.
Officially, Zhang’s case is framed as part of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, launched after he took power in 2012, which has seen hundreds of generals investigated or jailed. Corruption in PLA procurement is well documented, and Zhang once oversaw procurement portfolios involving vast budgets. But timing matters. Xi abolished presidential term limits in March 2018, breaking the post-Deng norm of leadership rotation. After securing a third term at the 20th Party Congress in October 2022, the pace and depth of military purges accelerated, with increasing emphasis on “absolute loyalty to the Chairman” rather than institutional command.
By late 2025, multiple senior officers tied to logistics, equipment, and strategic forces had been removed, narrowing the senior command structure. Zhang’s investigation reduced the CMC further, leaving political commissars and loyalty-tested figures in positions once balanced by experienced operational commanders. Analysts in Taiwan publicly described the leadership changes as “abnormal” on January 26, 2026, stating that Taipei was closely monitoring the situation due to the implications for regional stability.
The significance of Zhang’s fall lies less in the allegation itself than in what his absence represents. He was among the few remaining PLA leaders with combat experience from the 1979 Sino-Vietnam war, a background that gave him credibility when assessing costs, risks, and human consequences of conflict. His long personal association with Xi, dating back to childhood and reinforced by their fathers’ revolutionary ties, suggested a channel for candour that few others possessed. With Zhang gone, the system moves closer to one in which military advice is filtered through political loyalty rather than professional judgment.
Pt-2: THE JOURNALIST WHO ASKED TOO EARLY-THE DISAPPEARANCE OF REPORTER MINNIE CHAN
The Zhang Youxia case also intersects with a separate but revealing disappearance that predates the public announcement by more than two years. In October 2023, veteran defence reporter Minnie Chan disappeared in Beijing while covering the Xiangshan Forum, China’s flagship security conference. No charges were announced. No official explanation was given. She has not been seen publicly since.
Chan had spent years cultivating sources within the PLA and was widely regarded as one of the most informed external observers of China’s military. In September 2023, weeks before her disappearance, she was actively investigating rumours that Zhang Youxia and fellow CMC figure Zhang Shengmin were under internal probe. According to contemporaneous communications later described publicly by a former U.S. defence official who had worked closely with her, Chan confirmed that such investigations were underway. Within a month, she vanished.
There is no public evidence that her reporting on Zhang directly caused her detention. Chan covered multiple sensitive topics, and journalists in China have been detained for a wide range of reasons. But the chronology is difficult to ignore. Rumours of Zhang’s investigation circulated internally by 2023, were pursued by a journalist with deep PLA contacts, and were only acknowledged officially in January 2026. Chan’s disappearance fits a recurring pattern in which scrutiny is shut down early, long before outcomes are made public.
The pattern has repeated across Xi’s tenure. Lawyers, economists, journalists, and officials have disappeared at moments when elite political decisions were still being finalised. By the time announcements are made, the information environment has already been cleared of independent verification. What remains is a single, controlled narrative.
The convergence of Zhang’s fall and Chan’s disappearance underscores the same underlying reality: China’s political system increasingly treats both independent military judgment and independent inquiry as risks to be neutralised. Between 2023 and 2026, senior officers were removed, journalists silenced, and command authority concentrated. Each step was incremental. Taken together, they describe a system closing ranks around one man.
There is no confirmed coup, no public rebellion, no open confrontation. What exists instead is something quieter and potentially more dangerous: a narrowing of counsel, a shrinking tolerance for contradiction, and the steady removal of those who connect facts too early or speak too plainly. As one former official involved in U.S.- China military exchanges put it after Zhang’s detention became public, the danger now is not haste, but miscalculation born of obedience.
In that sense, the Zhang Youxia investigation is not only about corruption or discipline. It is about the cost of governing without friction and about those who disappear when they insist on providing it.
