After the carnage, there aren’t even enough people left to form a WeChat group. [Chinese]

Last week’s announcement of investigations into Generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli has profound implications for China’s elite politics and near-term military capacity, but it also left China’s Central Military Commission with just two members, down from its former seven. The survivors are Xi Jinping himself as chairman, and disciplinary official Zhang Shengmin. The attrition has prompted wry online commentary, including the above observation that the CMC no longer meets the three-member minimum necessary to start a group on WeChat. This should not be an insurmountable logistical problem: another comment suggested that the two remaining members could now simply hop on the phone. Yet another suggested: "If you’re still complaining about pressure at work, just think of Zhang Shengmin." Online discussion, unsurprisingly, has been curtailed: CDT Chinese editors have noted at least two posts that were deleted for simply repeating the purged members’ official biographies.

Zhang and Liu are just the latest senior military officers to fall. At The New York Times, Chris Buckley highlighted a report last November from Asia Society’s Neil Thomas and Lobsang Tsering, which stated: "Of 44 uniformed officers selected to the [Party’s] Central Committee in 2022, 29 have either been purged or are missing, leaving a political survival rate of only 34.1% for China’s top generals. Lower-ranking officers fared only slightly better: seven of 23 military alternates, or 30.4%, are also in trouble."

Zhang Youxia’s removal has received particularly intense scrutiny given his status as an apparently close ally of Xi’s and one of the last top military leaders with actual operational experience—see, for example, analyses from Foreign Policy, The Economist, the Financial Times, and from K. Tristan Tang at Jamestown:

Senior officials in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) almost always carry some exposure to legal or corruption issues. Whether Xi Jinping chooses to act is decisive, as the 2023 Equipment Development Department probe that stopped at Li Shangfu but spared Zhang Youxia illustrates (China Brief, September 20, 2023). Based on official statements and recent developments in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), one can identify the probable core reasons and internal logic behind this purge. Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli most likely fell from power due to disagreements with Xi Jinping over PLA development, particularly the joint operations training timeline, and may have pursued policies or issued orders that ran counter to Xi’s directives. (The simultaneous announcement of investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli indicates the decision stemmed from the same underlying cause.)

[…] Taken together, political and military evidence points to disagreements between Zhang and Xi over the pace and method of joint training. Both officers [Zhang and Liu] possess real operational experience and likely held firm views on combat and training requirements. They may have judged some of Xi’s objectives, including the force-building timeline, as unrealistic, and resisted or declined to implement them on professional military grounds.

[…] Although the probability of achieving the 2027 Taiwan invasion capability remains extremely low, Xi Jinping will likely appoint successors who are willing to execute his military blueprint in place of Zhang and Liu. Under intense pressure, these successors may accelerate the pace of joint operations training and push forward joint drills or even exercises in a more rushed manner. As a result, while the Chinese military remains unlikely to invade Taiwan in the near term, PLA training and exercise activity may become more aggressive and more frequent than in recent years. [Source]

On Thursday, The New York Times’ Chris Buckley reported further on assessments of the purge’s implications for Taiwan:

Already, the turmoil appears to be slowing the military’s momentum, [former CIA analyst and current Brookings Institution nonresident senior fellow John] Culver argued, noting that some public exercises that take place every year seem to have been postponed. In Mr. Culver’s view, the Chinese leader may become more hesitant, not more belligerent, when it comes to Taiwan.

“For Xi Jinping,” Mr. Culver said, “Taiwan is a crisis he needs to avoid, not an opportunity he wants to seize.”

[…] The danger, some analysts say, is that new commanders may lack the confidence and authority to give Mr. Xi candid military assessments.

“If Xi Jinping gets bad advice, if he miscalculates because he’s got sycophants telling him what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear, that’s risk number one,” said Drew Thompson, a former Pentagon official who hosted General Zhang and other Chinese senior officers on a visit to the United States in 2012. [Source]