Cheka with Chinese Characteristics: Purges Inside China’s Red Army

12 Feb 2026 11:57 AM

Recent purges within the Central Military Commission in China echo the Chekist approach to ideological purity and absolute loyalty to the Party and, at its core, Xi Jinping.

Remember the Cheka? The first Soviet secret security organisation, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, was established in 1917 by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to protect the Bolshevik Revolution. It was designed to eliminate threats to the Soviet regime and, eventually, it was the Cheka that enforced the Red Terror against political opponents.

Recent purges within the Central Military Commission (CMC) in China echo the Chekist approach to ideological purity and absolute loyalty to the Party and, at its core, Xi Jinping. While the outside world witnesses the falling heads, in the absence of an independent judicial process, a guessing game has begun: Was it deep-rooted corruption that corroded the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)? Did the generals plot a coup against Xi Jinping? Or did they oppose Xi’s plans to take over Taiwan or Xi’s timeline for PLA modernisation? Publicly, we learned only that Generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were under investigation for ‘serious violations,’ which implies that the verdict has already been reached, but the sentence would be provided later in a form that serves the Party.

In this context, this analysis cannot claim to shed new light on the purges, but rather to point out how absolute loyalty is the core pattern embedded in Communist Party rule, whether in the former Soviet Union or in contemporary China. This embedded pattern is not something that the Party wishes to show to the outside world; instead, the Party’s speaking points emphasise that every country has a right to choose its form of governance, and therefore, what happens in China is nobody’s business. Interestingly, only shortly after these recent purges, Xi Jinping received the Finnish and British Prime Ministers, and then spoke with Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on the same day. The message to the outside could not be clearer: Xi Jinping is in absolute control.

Since Xi Jinping assumed leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the Central Military Commission (CMC) in 2012, his anti-corruption and loyalty campaigns have led to numerous purges of senior PLA generals and officers – approximately 80 in total, including now all but one from the CMC – China's top military decision-making body, which he chairs. The purges have intensified notably since 2023, affecting 50 high-ranking officials and specifically targeting the Rocket Force, defence ministers, and CMC members. In the PLA, in less than three years, 28 full generals have been removed or have ‘disappeared’. This is described as one of the largest military leadership shakeups since the Cultural Revolution and, even then, Mao Zedong did not purge his officials to this extent.

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