Yesterday, we were all sort of stunned to find that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping had summarily dismissed and had placed under investigation General Zhang Youxia, the now-former vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission; see New Round of Purges Wrack the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and Defense Establishment – RedState. The removal of Zhang meant 37 of the 81 generals appointed since October 2022 were either under arrest or had simply disappeared.
The initial reports said Zhang was removed because he “undermined Xi’s authority, abetted political and corruption problems that impaired the party’s leadership over the armed forces, and damaged efforts to develop combat effectiveness.” Now more information is coming out and, if true, it is stunning.
According to an exclusive in The Wall Street Journal, at a briefing held Saturday, it was revealed that Zhang was accused of one-upping Mark Milley’s call during the Trump-to-Biden transition period; see HUGE: Mark Milley Pledged to the Chinese to Commit Treason in Order to Undermine Donald Trump – RedState. While Milley merely promised to give China a heads-up in case Donald Trump plotted thermonuclear Armageddon during his last days in office. Zhang was allegedly flipped by the CIA and passed China’s nuclear secrets to the U.S.
The briefing—attended on Saturday morning by some of the military’s highest-ranking officers—came just before China’s Ministry of National Defense made the bombshell announcement of an investigation into Gen. Zhang Youxia, once considered Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s most-trusted military ally. That statement gave few details beyond a probe of severe violations of party discipline and state laws.
But the people familiar with the briefing—which hasn’t been reported until now—said Zhang is under investigation for allegedly forming political cliques, a phrase describing efforts to build networks of influence that undermine party unity, and abusing his authority within the Communist Party’s top military decision-making body, known as the Central Military Commission.
Authorities are also scrutinizing his oversight of a powerful agency responsible for the research, development and procurement of military hardware. Those familiar with the briefing said Zhang was alleged to have accepted huge sums of money in exchange for official promotions in this big-budget procurement system.
The most shocking allegation disclosed during the closed-door briefing, the people said, was that Zhang had leaked core technical data on China’s nuclear weapons to the U.S.
Some evidence against Zhang came from Gu Jun, the former general manager of the China National Nuclear Corp., a state-owned company that oversees all aspects of China’s civilian and military nuclear programs, said the people familiar with the briefing. Beijing announced an investigation into Gu last Monday for suspected severe violations of party discipline and state laws.
During Saturday’s briefing, authorities revealed that the probe into Gu has linked Zhang to a security breach within China’s nuclear sector, the people said. Details on the breach weren’t disclosed during the briefing, the people said.
Let’s be clear, this story is based on a secret briefing that was leaked to The Wall Street Journal. We rightfully don’t know the source’s provenance or how many hands the story passed through before reaching the press. What we can say with some degree of certainty is that having a CIA source embedded in your military high command does not give Xi a public relations boost; it makes this latest purge look like a panicked act of weakness rather than the action of a strong leader rooting out corruption.
Some China specialists are very skeptical.
I’m a little skeptical of the claim in this @WSJ piece that top PLA general Zhang Youxia “leaked core technical data on China’s nuclear weapons to the U.S.”
I could be wrong and the “people familiar with a high-level briefing” could be right, but here are some questions and… pic.twitter.com/xnTqyWDDDc
— Neil Thomas 牛犇 (@neilthomas123) January 25, 2026
I’m a little skeptical of the claim in this @WSJ piece that top PLA general Zhang Youxia “leaked core technical data on China’s nuclear weapons to the U.S.” I could be wrong and the “people familiar with a high-level briefing” could be right, but here are some questions and thoughts:
1. How would Zhang even do this? He would have to get these secrets from the China National Nuclear Corporation and transmit/hand them to an agent. But his communications are monitored and he rarely (if ever?) meets anyone unaccompanied. Would require a pretty vast conspiracy to go undetected for a long time. And for battle-hardened general to betray everything that gave his life meaning for last few decades. Possible, but very difficult. Unbelievable work by U.S. intelligence agencies, if true. (To be clear, I think the journalists believed their source in Beijing was telling the truth, what I’m curious about is whether the source actually knew the full extent of the truth.)
2. Some suggestions out there that this story is made credible by reports in 2023 that a Russian deputy defense minister told Xi that former foreign minister Qin Gang helped pass nuclear secrets to the West. Back then I found these reports highly questionable: how would Qin get anywhere close to nuclear secrets, given MOFA and the PLA are so stovepiped? And if this were true and known by Beijing, surely Qin would be purged rather than allowed to just resign from the Central Committee? Moreover, if I were Russian and had the info, I would keep it and use it to recruit Qin as a source.
3. Perhaps the nuclear accusations really were made at a briefing on Saturday! As the piece notes, internal accounts are not always true, and perhaps the really very incredible nature of purging Zhang meant that Beijing felt it needed to come up with the most serious story possible to justify his detention, even for serious but less sensational corruption and disloyalty. Maybe it’s a justification. It would be a little extreme, even for Xi, but I think this is more believable.
4. A somewhat more plausible claim in the story is that Zhang accepted huge bribes to help Li Shangfu get promoted to the CMC in 2022. Still, this would require a shocking level of ignorance or bravado from both Zhang and Li given how politics has changed since 2012. It sounds exactly like so many of the pre-Xi corruption cases. I believe it’s most likely that Zhang got caught up in the corruption scandals that have rocked the procurement bureaucracy over the last few years and which took down Li. His political sin would be corruption, covering for others in a corrupt conspiracy (already political-clique-type behavior), and betraying Xi’s loyalty and trust by not implementing his vision for a cleaner and more capable fighting force.
5. The rest of the story is good! But the most scandalous details are consistent with rumors flying around financial circles in Beijing. These folks could be right, but they could just be spreading great stories. Not sure what, if anything, military/political elites are saying…
I welcome rebuttals to my doubts! I am an avid reader of both journalists who wrote this story, I’m just sharing these thoughts because studying Chinese elite politics is really difficult, and I believe that debate helps us to get closer to confidence about the truth.
At first blush, one might have questioned how Aldrich Ames could have betrayed 30 agents and over 100 active operations in the USSR, given his nothingburger role at the CIA. The answer is that bureaucracies are sloppy, and the higher you go in a bureaucracy, the easier it is to see stuff you shouldn’t see without anyone questioning you. Maybe Zhang didn’t steal nuclear secrets and was busted totally for taking humongous bribes. If so, why not stick with the simple story rather than invent a cover that makes Xi’s grip on power look tenuous? The only way that makes sense is if there is another major wave of purges coming, and Zhang’s alleged nuclear theft will be a feature in them.
The fact is that Xi has gutted China’s military command and staff structure for whatever reason. The removal of those people, no matter their level of competence or incompetence, will have a deleterious effect on China’s military capability. New people will need to be put into place. New relationships will be formed. Trust must be reestablished. All of that takes time, and time is something that I think Xi and China are running short of.
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