Joseph Belbruno Blog

  Analysis: Xi Jinping purges his conduit to party elders Loss of Gen. Zhang Youxia could hollow out China's military KATSUJI NAKAZAWA January 29, 2026 04:00 JST Katsuji Nakazawa is a Tokyo-based senior staff and editorial writer at Nikkei. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief and was the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize. And then will there really be none? Chinese military generals, including those close to supreme leader Xi Jinping, have mysteriously vanished from public view one after another in recent years. In a new twist to China's political saga that has sent shockwaves around the world, Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi has purged Zhang Youxia, the top uniformed officer of the People's Liberation Army. Zhang, 75, a member of the Communist Party's powerful Politburo and the senior of the two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, has long been seen as o...

  Purge in Beijing Nato may be in trouble, but the sticky embrace of unstable China is not the answer China’s military elite is being rocked by an extraordinary purge that raises concerns about the country’s stability. President Xi has sacked his most senior general and political confidant, Zhang Youxia, apparently in connection with corruption allegations and, according to some reports, for betraying nuclear secrets to the United States. As a result of the clean-out, China’s central military commission, the body that controls its armed forces on behalf of the Communist party, now has only two out of seven of its original members still in place: Mr Xi himself and a general who has overseen the purges. Since 2023, successive waves of top military commanders have been removed and placed under investigation. Of the 44 uniformed officers appointed to the Communist party’s central committee in 2022, 29 have been dismissed or gone missing. The official explanation in most of the cases is...

  Does it matter that Mark Carney wrote his excellent speech to Davos himself? In part, it matters because it is demoralising to me personally to learn that the list of jobs that I am worse at than Carney now includes not only central banker, political campaigner, prime minister, university ice hockey player but also writer. But it matters, too, because it is a reminder of a neglected truth, that writing is a core part of providing effective leadership.  Or, more accurately, writing first drafts. Margaret Thatcher delivered many speeches that, like Carney’s, quoted philosophers and drew from history to make points. And although she astutely presented herself as a no-nonsense figure, Thatcher was undoubtedly a first-class intellectual who took the time to engage similarly intellectual MPs, including discussing the work of Karl Popper with his biographer, the then Labour MP Bryan Magee. Her speeches reflected that. Most of the actual writing was done by the playwright Ronald Mil...