A man once seen as untouchable is now accused of betraying China’s most guarded secrets—Xi’s military purge just crossed a new line.
China’s leadership has been shaken by explosive allegations that a senior military commander leaked nuclear weapons secrets to the United States, in what may become the most damaging scandal yet to strike President Xi Jinping’s armed forces.
Gen. Zhang Youxia, widely described as the operational leader of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), was dismissed on Saturday for a “serious violation of discipline,” with subsequent reports suggesting he is accused of handing sensitive nuclear data to Washington. The claims, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were laid out during a closed-door briefing attended by some of the highest-ranking officers in the PLA, hours before Beijing formally announced that Zhang was under investigation.
At that briefing, Zhang was also accused of accepting a bribe to elevate a senior officer to the post of defence minister and of forming “political cliques,” charges that strike at the core of Xi’s long-running campaign against corruption and factionalism inside the military.
The allegations reportedly stem from evidence presented by Gu Jun, a former senior manager at China National Nuclear Corporation, the state entity overseeing both civilian and military nuclear programs. Gu himself is under investigation as part of a sweeping anti-corruption drive in China’s defence and nuclear sectors, announced last week. Officials told the briefing that Gu’s case uncovered a major security breach inside China’s nuclear establishment, with Zhang allegedly implicated.
If confirmed, the implications would be extraordinary. Zhang, 75, is not a marginal figure. A veteran of China’s brief but bloody war with Vietnam in 1979, he is among the few top commanders with real combat experience. More importantly, he was long considered politically untouchable, in part because of his childhood ties to Xi Jinping.
His downfall marks the most dramatic moment yet in Xi’s effort to cleanse the military of corruption and disloyalty while tightening personal control over the armed forces.
Since assuming power, Xi has more than doubled China’s defence budget and pledged to transform the PLA into a “world-class” military by 2049. U.S. intelligence has said he has also ordered the military to be capable of invading Taiwan by next year — a timeline that now appears increasingly strained.
In October, nine senior generals were removed in a sweeping purge, including He Weidong, a former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), China’s top military body. With Zhang’s removal, the CMC is now reportedly reduced to just two members — one of them Xi himself. All six uniformed commanders appointed in 2022 have now been purged.
Once the nerve center of China’s military modernization, the commission is at its smallest size in history, prompting analysts to warn that Beijing’s ambitions toward Taiwan may have been set back by years.
Beyond the operational impact, the scandal underscores a deeper fragility: a leadership that publicly projects unity and discipline, yet is increasingly consumed by internal distrust. If one of Xi’s closest and most seasoned generals can fall under suspicion of betraying nuclear secrets, it suggests that China’s greatest vulnerability may no longer lie abroad, but within.
