China’s sweeping military purge has now reached General Zhao Zongqi (retd.), the former commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Western Theatre Command who was in charge during the 2017 Doklam standoff and the deadly 2020 Galwan clash with India. Zhao has been stripped of his membership of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and removed from two other posts. Beijing has given no explanation for his removal and has not announced that he is under investigation. The CPPCC is one of China’s highest-level political institutions and the country’s top political advisory body.
Zhao is hardly an insignificant casualty. When the PLA was reorganised into five theatre commands in 2016, Xi Jinping personally handed Zhao the military flag as commander of the newly created Western Theatre Command. The command oversees China’s military operations along its western strategic frontier, including the border with India. His removal therefore carries considerable symbolism as Galwan represented the largest Chinese military loss in a single border conflict since the 1969 Sino-Soviet clashes.
The bloody nose China got in Galwan was the first serious pushback to China against its ‘salami slicing’ tactics against its neighbours. In June 2020, Chinese and Indian troops fought a brutal hand-to-hand battle in the Himalayas. India lost 20 soldiers — a toll New Delhi acknowledged within days. China remained silent about its losses before eventually admitting, eight months later, that four PLA soldiers had died even as Indian and Western intelligence estimates put the Chinese death toll considerably higher at around 40 or more.
His removal comes as Xi’s military purge reaches extraordinary proportions. A Center for Strategic and International Studies assessment identified 101 senior PLA officers who had been officially purged or potentially purged or missing since 2022. CSIS found that 41 of 47 PLA leaders who were generals in 2022 or were promoted to three-star positions afterwards had been purged or potentially purged — an extraordinary 87 per cent.
And the purge is not confined to men who were Xi’s adversaries. Many were elevated by Xi himself. CSIS found that 32 of the 35 three-star generals Xi promoted from 2020 onwards appeared to have been investigated, with 29 subsequently confirmed or potentially purged. The purge has also reached Zhang Youxia, a vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission and one of China’s most senior generals, and CMC member Liu Zhenli. Their removal from the state CMC last week left only two active members of the seven-member body, including Xi himself. Beijing’s official line points to corruption investigations, but the pattern speaks for itself: a purge this deep, this fast, and reaching this close to Xi’s own inner circle is not hard to read.
It fits a much broader pattern under Xi. Former president Hu Jintao’s dramatic removal from the Communist Party Congress in 2022 became an enduring symbol of the end of China’s old model of collective leadership. And the spectacular fall of billionaire Jack Ma after he publicly criticised China’s financial regulators — followed by the suspension of Ant Group’s record-breaking $37 billion IPO — demonstrated the limits of even enormous private wealth when it appears to collide with Xi’s ego.
The economic backdrop makes the spectacle even more striking. China remains a formidable economic and military power, but its property crisis, weak domestic demand and slowing growth have exposed significant vulnerabilities. And when power becomes so concentrated that generals, ministers and businessmen know the consequences of crossing the leader, who is left to tell him when he is wrong?
Zhao Zongqi’s removal is therefore about more than one retired general. It is another window into Xi Jinping’s China — a country attempting to project strength to the outside world while its leader is conducting an extraordinary purge within its own ruling and military establishment, the hallmark of a weak and insecure ruler.
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