In this week’s episode of China Insider, Miles Yu covers the recent Chinese Communist Party investigations into the vice chair of China’s Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, and the chief of staff of the commission’s Joint Staff Department, Liu Zhenli, and what these purges mean for People’s Liberation Army operations and effectiveness. Next, Miles reviews the authorization of President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, the international actors that have joined so far, and the significance of the board to Beijing. Finally, Miles unpacks China’s demographic crisis and declining birthrate, and how the CCP plans to respond to the crisis.
China Insider is a weekly podcast project from Hudson Institute’s China Center, hosted by China Center Director and Senior Fellow, Dr. Miles Yu, who provides weekly news that mainstream American outlets often miss, as well as in-depth commentary and analysis on the China challenge and the free world’s future.
Episode Transcript
This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.
Miles Yu:
Welcome to China Insider, a podcast from the Hudson Institute's China Center. I am Miles Yu, senior fellow and director of the China Center. Join me each week for our analysis of the major events concerning China, China threat, and their implications to the US and beyond.
Colin Tessier-Kay:
It is Tuesday, January 27th and we have three topics this week. First, we cover CCP investigations into the PLAs top general Zhang Youxia (张又侠) and Chief of Staff of the Commission's Joint Staff Department Liu Zhenli (刘振立), and what a potential purge would mean for current military leadership. Next we look into the recent authorization of President Trump's Board of Peace, the members that have joined so far, and the significance of the board to China in particular. Finally, we take a look at China's declining birth rate, which has taken a historic plunge to the lowest levels since 1949 and how the CCP plans to respond to the demographic crisis. Miles, great to be with you again this week.
Miles Yu:
Nice to be with you again, Colin. Hope you're keeping warm because we have the big, big snowstorm in Washington area this week.
Colin Tessier-Kay:
Yeah, likewise, especially out by the coast there. I hope your back holds out for the shoveling! Let's dive right in here. So up first today we're back to the purge campaign, as just last week, the CCP announced investigations into two senior leadership members, Zhang Youxia, the more senior of the two vice chairs in the Central Military Commission and a top PLA General and Liu Zhenli, the Chief of Staff of the Central Military Commission's Joint Staff Department. The announcement did not specify what the allegations were, likely corruption of some form, but this all comes on the tails of the recent purge of General He Weidong (何卫东) back in October and stands to shake up PLA leadership even further. So Miles, who exactly are Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, and what should we know about the investigations going on here?
Miles Yu:
Well, so this current purge has generated the enormous buzz both in official print, social media, and a whole bunch of other formats of information. Youxia is the surviving vice chairman of the CMC, that's the Central Military Commission, which is the highest command authority of the CCP as well as the PLA Liberation Army. He is a combat veteran and he's the highest uniform officer in the entire Chinese regime. So his downfall is pretty telling because he seems to survive all the purchase in the CMC. Now, the CMC, the Central Military Commission, normally has seven people. The chairman of course is supreme leader himself, Xi Jinping - he is the top and then normally there are two vice chairman and Youxia was one of them. Another one his, well, his co-chair as you mentioned he was purged. So there's one guy who's in charge of discipline. Then everybody else, all other four or five people, have been purged.
So now the seven members, CMC has only two people left. That's Xi himself and the newly promoted vice chair chairman Zhang Shengmin (张升民) who is in charge of discipline. So it's ridiculous. So this purge at the CMC to the world is both a comedy and a tragedy. It shows that how absurd Chinese politics it is and as well as it's bad. So absurdity is really the thing. Now, normally Xi Jinping always uses the rules to purge those senior highest ranking officers. Corruption, yes, they're all corrupt, but five out of the seven or 72% of the senior officers cannot be all be purged because of corruption. So it got to be something else that something else is really political. Loyalty and or imagine disloyalty as though we always say in Chinese is, which means not loyal absolutely means absolute disloyalty, which deserve to be purged.
Colin Tessier-Kay:
Yeah, good that you bring up the disloyalty aspect there because I think we were talking about, I'm trying to remember, back in October under He Weidong, it was almost like the writing was on the wall that, of the two vice chair positions, if Weidong was susceptible, then it was likely that Zhang Youxia was next on deck and it was just a matter of time for when and now we've kind of reached that point. So I was looking into some of this and according to Reuters, this is the, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but the second removal of a sitting general on the CMC since the 1966-76 cultural revolution. And it seems like both Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli last appeared with Xi Jinping at a military promotion event back on December 22nd, but haven't appeared in public since then. So all indications were that it was thought that Zhang, at least despite being a member of the old guard and one of the last remaining generals with combat experience was also one of she's closest military allies in the party. So to go back to the disloyalty Miles, where did this likely come from? Was this something that Xi had probably planned lined up just to get more loyal followers, second-tier PLA generals? And speaking of that, who is likely next up to take Zhang’s place as the next vice chair?
Miles Yu:
Nobody - nobody really wants to be in that position. Well, you mentioned about Zhang Youxia and He Weidong were the senior most senior military person to be purged. That's true. And yes and no because you remember Deng did the same thing at the time he purged the party. So even though he was not a uniform person, he was in charge of a huge chunk of the CMC. So you go back, this corruption charge against the senior official is so ridiculous. It is really defies common sense. In addition to, they officially announced a boilerplate charge against Zhang, and by the way, Liu Zhenli is equivalent to the chair of the joint chiefs in the US system. So he's not the same member level but still very significant. He's an operations guy in addition to the boilerplate charge of serious violation of party discipline and national law.
If you read the Chinese government official announcement of the purge of Zhang and LIu, it says in bold print that those officers were purged because they're violating the same rule of the Chairman's supremacy, which means that those two people are challenging the supremacy and infallibility of the Chairman himself. That's Xi Jinping. So this is obviously the reason. So you see this is basically is a power play. Xi Jinping is so paranoid any sign of disagreement is translated into a sign of disloyalty. That's why these two were charged. What's really, really is amazing over this whole issue is not only the purge of these two gentlemen who are very significant in their PLA hierarchy, but also the rumor machines went bananas worldwide. Inside the Chinese cyberspace you have this generation of a so-called bedroom whisperers tin trunk. Those would be CCP insiders, mainly snake oil salesman on the internet.
And also you got some reputable newspapers who were sucked into this kind of cycle of a rumor machine, Wall Street Journal and New York Times in particular, and also some expert analysts who've been run on specific information for decades and all based upon speculations as flimsy and if any evidence at all, usually hearsay from so-and-so in Beijing who has an uncle in the National Ministry of Defense or who's cousin is a chauffeur for a mid-ranking PLA officer. And based on all those sources, hearsays, they have some kind incredible stories to tell. None of it is supported by real hard evidence. But there is one logic. The logic is that for anybody who is hurt, you have to have two qualifications. Number one, you are usually very close to the supreme leader and also two, usually you have real inference inside the regime, particularly command authority over the armed forces. So in this sense it's very logical for Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli and many others to be purged because they're very close to Xi Jinping and they have a real influence inside the regime and this to meet the standard. So it's not surprising to me at all
Colin Tessier-Kay:
To round out this topic. We know of Xi's plans for PLA modernization, I think with stated goals at least to complete modernization projects by 2035 and become a world-class armed force by 2049. So Miles, what will these purges mean for the capability and effectiveness of PLA operations and will these purges impede she's planned modernization progress or will these goals remain largely unaffected by the dismissals?
Miles Yu:
Well, it's hard to say, but I think definitely it will have a terrible, terrible blow to the morale of the rank and file officers of PLA. It definitely is going to be very detrimental to the development of this capabilities. However, in a totalitarian regime, you would never be short of diehard followers of a supreme leader because of his sheer power, his sheer monopoly of all the access to promotion to mobility and so he can always find somebody who follow him. This is very similar to what Stalin did in 1937. In 1937, Joseph Stalin realized the highest ranking Soviet Union military officer is a guy by the name of Marshall Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Now in 1937, Stalin realized this guy has to go because he has too much power, he's too close to me. So Stalin bought the charge against Tukhachevsky saying he's leaking information to collude with the Germans to topple Stalin. So he arrested him and executed him 1937.
Many PLA senior officers are meeting the same fate. I mean there was the paranoia, the degree - the level of paranoia in the supreme leader is absolutely astonishing. So for Xi Jinping, you can safely say Xi has no enemies, but also he has no friends either and the ultimate fate of the dictatorship. Now before we go on to the next topic, I'd like to really talk about some of the established narrative mostly coming from Wall Street Journal that says that the Zhang Youxia purge was because he leaked the nuclear program secret to the CIA - an interesting theory, but I'm highly skeptical of all the provenance of this story is suspicious. It goes something like this: there's a guy, his name is Gu Jun, he is a Party Chief of China's Civil Military Nuclear Development Program called CNC. So he was busted and in his confession he said, ‘you know what? General Zhang is trying to get nuclear secrets from me. And he used that and he leaked to the Americans.’
This sounds really, really stupid because number one Gu Jun is a civilian guy in charge China nuclear program. Yes, there might be some kind of a dual use capacity there, but Zhang as the vice chair, he knows all the weaponized nuclear secrets already. He doesn't need some information from Gu Jun to have this kind of secret. He has secrets already. So this really is not plausible to me. Now the danger of promoting such a theory that he is purged because he leaked national secret to the enemy could be a trap promoted by the CCP because it can sell to the Chinese people that Zhang downfall has nothing to do with his deal to Xi Jinping, which is very infamous and unpopular in China. But because he is enemy of the Chinese as a nation, he leaked the state secret to the enemies.
I don't think that's really a good theory we want to promote without any solid evidence. As a matter of fact, if you know the CCP history, you would know that the charge of colluding with foreigners with the foreign adversary is the norm. It's not exception. Mostly phony charges of course, but they're extraordinarily real in the minds of the supreme leader. Whether it be Mao, Deng, Xi Jinping they're all the same. You look at the under Mao's rule since 1949 until 1976, he purged some of the major leaders within the CCP and particularly within the PLA. All charged with foreign spying or leaking national secrets to foreigners in the 1950s. Gao Gang (高岗), charged with leaking secretes with Soviet Union to establish independent kingdom. Now the next one is 1959, Marshall Peng Dehuai (彭德怀) who was defense minister, he was purged because he was accused of colluding with the Soviet mostly Khrushchev in criticizing Mao’s Great Leap Forward and People's Communist scheme.
So Liu Shaoqi, the very person against whom Mao launched the cultural revolution in 1966 was regarded as a renegade, a foreign spy - pàntú nèijiān gōngzī (叛徒内奸工资). So Lin Biao (林彪), of course Mao’s heir apparent was accused of colluding with the Soviets who was a China's number one enemy at the time. He was killed in a plane crash on his way, allegedly defecting to the Soviet Union. So you can see on and on and I mentioned Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳), the party chief, who was purged after 1989 Tiananmen Massacre partly because Ziyang told the ultimate state secret to the visiting Soviet Union Party Chief Gorbachev. He said to Gorbachev that I'm not really in charge even though my title looks like I'm in charge, but Deng Xiaoping is really in charge. And that's basically something that he's purged for in part. And then you look at Xi Jinping since he's taking power in 2012, I mean this paranoia against leaking information against colluded with foreigners to topple him has gone absolutely bonkers.
The first person he purged was the Party bureau chief, Bo Xilai (薄熙来), who was the party chief in Chongqing, my hometown. His wife, Bo’s wife, was having an affair with what China think was the British MI-6 agent. And ultimately that British man was killed in Chongqing. That's one reason why he was poor. China's top cop in 2014 was purged by Xi Jinping, this guy's name is Zhou Yongkang (周永康), he was not just an ordinary member of the party bureau. He was a member of the standing committee of the party bureau, which is really high. And he was basically purged by Xi Jinping among others for deliberately leaking state secret to whom obviously it's foreigners, Americans, and second happened to another Politburo member, Ling Jihua (令计划). And then if you look at memory serves the, well, I think most of the listeners of this program will remember the downfall of Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang (秦刚) and downfall of one of several Chinese defense ministers, Li Shangfu (李尚福) and the downfall of the Rocket force commander, Wei Fenghe (魏凤和). They are all accused of colluding with foreigners. Qin was foreign minister, of course he had congress hours meeting with Americans and of his counterparts and Li Shangfu was a defense minister - one of the major job of defense ministers is to conduct foreign affairs. So he was the face of Chinese military international arena. He was basically purged partly because of that. So what I'm trying to say here is using the excuse of leaking state secret to foreigners is always a very cheap and convenient way to purge senior officers that supreme leader considered disloyal or otherwise.
Colin Tessier-Kay:
Yeah, that's a great point to make, especially since a lot of the most recent purges under Xi Jinping came almost immediately after those individuals had either conducted some sort of foreign mission or trip or visit with foreign officials, just lining up the accusations and allegations to correlate. But that'll be interesting to track at least in terms of the succession too, in terms of who replaces Zhang Youxia in the senior leadership and what that means for the PLA going forward. But turning to our next topic today, President Trump's Board of Peace initially proposed back in September of 2025, received authorization just recently through UN resolution 2803 to address the post-war reconstruction process in Gaza, including deployment of a temporary peacekeeping force. Several Middle Eastern leaders have so far joined the board and the charter even included invitations to some current US adversaries in Russia and China. So to start us off here, Miles, walk us through some of the background on the board of peace and the intended objectives here and what might be the rationale behind inviting members such as Russia and even China to participate.
Miles Yu:
Well, one of the major challenges to the United States in recent years is China's ability to co-opt some of the countries not at the center of global poverty, but at the periphery countries that have enormous veto power in international institutions like the United Nations or health organizations and countries that have a strategic location but also has enormous supply chain materials, minerals in particular. So this is one reasons why the Trump administration tried to fight back. The whole border of peace has gone far beyond Gaza. It's global in scale. So look at who joined this. There are all China's body bodies where China has spent enormous amount of money cultivating good grace and through mostly belt road initiative. Let's just say some of the members, some of the key core members of the board of peace, right? It doesn't really matter to Trump at either France, UK, Germany, Canada, joined or not.
It doesn't matter to him. What matters is the following country, Pakistan is a member of the board. Pakistan is a key link in China's railroad initiative is a global scheme of economic control. China and Pakistan has this something called the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that China invests a lot of money in over there. Turkey is a member of the board. Turkey has assigned a MOU and harmonizing China Circuit Road – a Belt Road Initiative vision for Turkey - has something called the middle corridor. So this is basically what China is trying to incorporate, BRI with the middle corridor of Turkey. Egypt is a member China and Egypt has enormous BRI corporation projects. China even has investment in Swiss Canal. They establish something called Swiss Canal economic zone. That's basically Chinese inference, if not China control Hungary. Hungary basically is serving as China's sort of a Trojan horse in the EU.
Hungary is a key EU country that's supporting closer ties with Beijing and aligning opening to the east with the BRI. So Hungary is really a problem for the United States in European land mass and in Vietnam. So Vietnam is a board member. Vietnam and China signed this 2017 MOU connecting Vietnam's two corridors of one belt with China's BRI. So this is a major problem. Vietnam has served as a China's transshipment hub for decades. That's one reason why you see Trump's tariff policy is particularly tough against Vietnam. And then Jordan, one of the challenges supporters of the US over the decades. Now Jordan also has a very strong China Jordan BRI memorandum of understanding. So that's basically is China Americans warrior do. And then Argentina, was a major BRI destination. Argentina also has a shared space program with PRC in Western hemisphere.
So this is something that's basically we're trying to do and I think the Trump administration’s Board of Peace, particularly designed as a governance body, it was also designed as a financing body and also the oversight mechanism. So you have three paradigms, right? Number one is governance. Governance. Basically you use a US-chaired position to create the alternative parallel multilateral structure. And also it has financial buy-in rules. You spend billion dollars to even qualify. And of course it created the accountability. You have to be transparent, you have to really basically to be sure that you do not really let China run you over. So that's why there is a supply chain agenda. There is a global south swing state. If you look at those countries as swing states in the global south, and you understand the Board of Peace plan is far more than just to implement Gaza's 20 points plan.
Colin Tessier-Kay:
We've spent time in past shows covering China's strategic vision for the Middle East and current initiatives like you mentioned through the BRI aimed at increasing Chinese presence in key regional economic and security sectors. So with that in mind, Miles, should China join the Board in official capacities, what exactly would their role be on the board as an individual participant? And what is the underlying significance, I would guess to say of the board's mission to China?
Miles Yu:
China will not join. This is very similar to 1947 when the United States announced its Marshall Plan to European countries. Now at the time it included all European countries, war-torn economies that would include the Soviet Union. But of course the Soviet Union would never join. So in the end, we knew from the beginning that program, the Marshall Plan was aimed at restoring western European economies. So Soviet Union basically flat out rejected. This is exactly the same thing was happening. China rejected the Board of Peace invitation flat out right?
Colin Tessier-Kay:
So we moved to our final topic today for a fourth year in a row. Now China's birth rate has continued its historic decline to the lowest level since 1949 with just 7.9 million births last year in 2025. China's birth rate has dropped 17% from the previous year, despite incentives from the CCP related to continued issues with high living costs, youth unemployment, and an aging population all contributing to the decline here. So the CCP has sought several solutions, let's say, including subsidies and incentives, declaring childbirth a patriotic act, even taxing condoms, and access to free preschool. And I think even more formally back in 2021, we have the three child policy. So Miles, walk us through what are the causes of yet another year of birth rate decline here for China and why haven't CCP policies been effective in reversing or even halting the decline?
Miles Yu:
Well, I think the most extraordinary thing is not the numbers, it's the fact that China actually open announced it. I am very skeptical of all the numbers that are coming out of the PRCS official mouthpiece, particularly the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics. It's basically a machine of really flat out mendacity. I think the fact that the Chinese government is so willingly, voluntarily announced this extraordinary drop in birth rate is another effort to cover up a gigantic lie from the very beginning. That is the real population number of China, which was probably not nearly as big as 1.4 billion. I don't know why China stick to that for decades. So I think they try to mitigate the impact if the lie is exposed. So that's why they can say, Hey, listen, it's through natural birth rate decline that really is accounting for the smaller number of Chinese demography.
So that's my overall take on this, on particular number of this, I think it has a lot to do. Now, that does not necessarily mean there's no nationwide unwillingness to have babies. Women in China are far less likely to have babies nowadays. Men do not want to either, mostly because of Chinese policy has plunged the Chinese economy and livelihood in most cases, particularly after COVID. So think about this, when a woman is in her most fertile age and she would be facing a lot of economic hardships jobs and also discrimination and the enormous pressure from a family that could be bigger than what she could support. And that's why as a result, a lot of women, I would not say most, a lot of women in China were less likely to become mother. You might say this is in line with the democratic tendency of the most developed countries like in Japan, like in South Korea, in us, in many countries in Europe.
But this is not the same cause as I say in western countries, in developed countries. First rate is also dropping, but has a lot to do with the increased independence of women in those states and also has a lot to do with the gender equality. Ironically, however, China's opposite is basically sheer poverty, sheer inability to predict the future. And is that uncertainty, that economic income level disparity that really gave people pause to continue to have a big family? If you really go ahead to have a family have say one kid or two. And what you're facing here is you are married at a young age, you have to take care of your own children with all your resources. In the meantime, your husband's parents are retired, your own parents are retired. So you got forever take care of. China is a country with extraordinarily weak social security net.
So basically the burden is crushing. That's one another reasons why people do not want the kids. So it's a combination of many factors. Don't forget, despite all this miraculous reporting about China's economic miracle lived eight, 800 million people out of poverty, those are all hot air. The fact remains, China's per capita income is among the lowest in the world. An average worker, his salary is about five to $10 a day. That's very low. That's one reason why China's purchasing power. It's a miracle. All those western companies trying to go to China, not just for the market share of China, it's potential, yes, but mostly they want to use cheap labor in China to manufacture goods so they can sell them to a highly industrial countries, industrial markets like the United States and Western Europe. So that's one reason why I think Chinese demographic statistics are very worrisome, not just for its phoniness, but also for the general trend of unpredictability. So anything the party says, you got to really look at it with some degree of distrust.
Colin Tessier-Kay:
Well, that brings us to the end of another enlightening conversation. Thank you to our listeners for joining us. And thank you Miles as always, for lending us your time and expert insight. I'm going to go try and not throw my back out with shoveling here, and I hope the same for you, but looking forward to seeing you again next week.
Miles Yu:
Alright, see you next week.