Briefly
According to The Wall Street Journal, citing informed interlocutors, current Chinese leader Xi Jinping began the latest wave of purges in the military in the summer of 2023; the culmination was the arrest of General Zhang Yuxia in January 2026. This is not purely an internal personnel story — the consequences are felt for regional security and for international regimes that control sensitive technologies.
What happened
WSJ reports that in the summer of 2023 Beijing stepped up a cleanup in the armed forces. In January 2026, at Xi’s order, the security services detained General Zhang Yuxia; he and his son, a military researcher, were accused of leaking key technical data relating to the nuclear program and of corruption. According to the cited sources, this was the culmination of a more than decade-long campaign to consolidate control over the military apparatus of Xi’s authority.
"The fall of Zhang Yuxia indicates that Xi Jinping’s 'personal rule' has reached a point where systemic trust — the belief that loyalty guarantees security — has entirely evaporated."
— Minxin Pei, professor at Claremont McKenna College, editor of China Leadership Monitor
Why it happened: the Russian lesson
WSJ sources and officials inside the CCP point to three triggers. First, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny in Russia (June 2023) demonstrated that even powerful militaries can become a source of internal instability. Second, Moscow’s inability to quickly quash the uprising and the reputational damage to the armed forces served as a warning for Beijing. Third, accumulated corruption problems in the military sector were undermining combat readiness, and Xi concluded that modernizing equipment without political loyalty posed a risk to the regime.
Consequences for regional security and for Ukraine
The purge of the military leadership has several practical consequences. First, in the short term it weakens operational stability and could restrain Beijing’s aggressive initiatives — command and control are complicated during rotations and investigations. Second, tightened personnel and technology controls mean stricter vetting of data exchanges and weapons cooperation — a fact important for Western services and Ukrainian partners tracking channels for the proliferation of critical technologies.
For Ukraine this is both a risk and an opportunity: the risk is that a more complicated decision-making architecture in Beijing can be unpredictable; the opportunity is that reduced readiness for external operations during internal purges gives additional space for diplomatic and defense initiatives by our allies.
Conclusion
Xi’s initiative stems not only from domestic political considerations but also from external lessons. If Russia showed that weapons modernization does not protect against internal fracture, Beijing responded by tightening personnel discipline. The question for Ukraine’s partners is clear: will Beijing turn this lesson into a restraint on regional behavior, or into a tool for even more centralized and controlled militarization? The answer will affect Europe’s security strategies and our work with allies to monitor sensitive technology flows.
