China’s Military Shake-Up Fuels Coup Speculation as State Media Issues Rare Rebuke
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The sudden downfall of two of China’s most senior military officials has triggered an intense response from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) propaganda outlets, fueling speculation among China analysts and observers that the purge may be linked to an attempted challenge to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s authority.
Roughly eight hours later, the military’s official newspaper, the People’s Liberation Army Daily, published a sharply worded editorial condemning both men in language rarely used against military leaders of their rank.
An Editorial With Political Weight
Officially, the People’s Liberation Army Daily framed the investigation as part of Beijing’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign. It urged the military to maintain absolute unity around the Party Central Committee and Xi as its leader, and to follow Xi’s command.However, analysts note that the editorial’s harsh criticisms—and its focus on political disloyalty rather than financial misconduct—have raised eyebrows.
China current affairs commentator Li Linyi told The Epoch Times that the rhetoric appeared to lend indirect credence to long-circulating rumors that Zhang and Liu may have been involved in an attempted political move against Xi.
Following the official announcement, Du Wen, a former legal adviser to the Inner Mongolia government who fled China and now lives in Belgium, said on his Chinese-language YouTube podcast that it is widely believed Zhang and Liu attempted a coup against Xi under the banner of “saving the CCP.” He described the situation as volatile.
Heightened Military Alert
Du also alleged that Xi had ordered the entire Chinese military into a heightened state of readiness, instructing units to halt routine work and await further directives from the Party’s central leadership. According to his account, troops were confined to their posts, external communications were cut off, and units were forbidden from redeploying—measures he said reflected Xi’s fear of forces moving toward Beijing.According to Wei’s post, service members’ mobile phones had been confiscated, and military units had been placed on high alert.
Loyalty Tests and the Risk of Military Instability
China commentator Li argued that while the official narrative portrays Xi as having reasserted control, the deeper effect within the military could be destabilizing.“All soldiers and officers can see how quickly even the CCP’s top leaders can fall,” he said. “If everyone is corrupt and disloyal by definition, morale erodes, and the risk of unrest increases rather than decreases.”
Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times that the episode reflects deeper structural problems within Xi’s system of rule. He described the CCP’s internal power struggles as an ominous sign for regime stability.
Su noted that Xi’s politically hard-line, ideologically leftist approach is increasingly incompatible with China’s economic realities, potentially provoking further internal crises.
“Xi himself has become the ultimate accelerator of the CCP’s decline,” he said.
Just weeks after those purges, the CCP’s propaganda mouthpiece People’s Daily published an article by Zhang Youxia in November in which he mentioned Xi or “Chairman Xi” more than 20 times and warned against becoming a “two-faced person” who displays false loyalty.
“The system itself manufactures ‘two-faced persons,’” Li said, pointing out that past figures had publicly pledged loyalty before falling from grace.
“Zhang Youxia’s political declarations [of loyalty] meant nothing.”
