Chinese analysts are not yet sure of the rewal reasons of China’s supremo Xi’s sudden retaliatory action against the leading military officials who are also very senior leaders of the Communist Party. The question that is being asked is whether Xi Jinping is doing these to root out all rival power centres against his undisputed hold over the entire Community Party ruling structure. Alternately, is he doing this out of fear of losing control and seeing opposition to his total domination?

One thing is plain clear: Xi Jinping is bit panicky. Although he had total control at the time, there is nothing to fall back upon in a crisis. That is a serious lacunae for country as big n powerful as China is now; more so, when that country has such an arsenal for destruction.

Xi Jinping has systematically cut out the most powerful military supremos one after another. In successive purges he had thrown out the military top guns from the military hierarchy and sent them out to jail and detention camps.

Only last October, Xi had sacked the other top generals of the CMC on charges of gross misconduct. These generally mean “corruption” and once the charges levied the person had hardly any opportunity to defend himself than confessing all the charges and reading out long condemnations of their conduct.

Deng Tsiao Ping, maker of China’s resurgence from the depredations of Mao Zhe Dong, had faced similar indictments time and again and had to suffer indignities during Mao’s increasingly erratic ways during and after the Cultural revolution. It was only after Mao’s demise that Deng could be rehabilitated.

General Zhang has also been accused of gross violations of discipline and the law. Rumours had started floating about his fate when he along with General Liu Zhenli, were seen to be absent during some party events and meetings of top military bodies.

General Liu Zhenli was another military leader in the top rung and looked after some of the most sensitive areas of military command. These purges had followed Xi’s expulsion of some of the nine topmost military commanders in October last year.

The sudden exit of so many top military commanders and leaders would have left a major vacuum in the military command structure of China. Of these, General Zhang would be considered one of the key as someone who alone had some active experience among the top brass.

General Zhang was seen as the second in command so far as military command structure was concerned, being the vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission. President Xi remains the chairman of the body, with just another member surviving.

Observers of the Chinese military set up generally agree about large scale corruption among the military brass. At the same time, the military is always the principal area of concern and of power grab. Any leader who enjoys control over the military structure could hope to continue in power.

Observers feel President Xi has now achieved such an extended system of domination that he could get away with the successive purges of the Chinese military establishment to retain his iron had over the state apparatus. His single point agenda of wiping out corruption from Chinese administrative and political system has come in handy for this supreme objective of survival.

Nonetheless, President Xi has alienated vast segments of the Chinese administrative and state apparatus and is increasingly becoming dependent on his loyalist base which make a situation of ever greater purges of efficient and effective people.

Removal of these top-level experts in their fields and losing their expertise would make the state apparatus weaker and further vulnerable. The situation has become so tenuous that Xi Jinping is not able to replace the attritions at the top with new appointments either.

This is principally because, Xi Jinping is losing his closest confidants and he is becoming doubtful about the loyalties of his replacements. After all, until his removal General Zhang, as vice chairman of the CMC, was seen as closest ally of Xi Jinping. President Xi had appointed him and he had remained as the second in command till his sudden removal.

General Zhang and Present Xi had come from the same background, which had made him a trusted ally. General Zhang’s father was a most successful military commander in Mao’s regime until he had faced the same purge as President Xi’s father. They were both later on somewhat rehabilitated.

In that sense, both Xi and Zhang were the so-called “princelings” in Chinese social structure and they followed similar career paths. It is certain that President Xi is facing a serious vacuum in the top of his state apparatus, particularly in the military set up. (IPA Service)