Xi’s Hold on China not so secure after all

Signs within China point to instability continuing in the wake of Chairman Xi’s recent purge of an attempted coup that appears to have been led by the-then second most powerful man in China, Zhang Youxia. Zhang was well-respected by the military, and they appear willing to send public signals they continue to support him.

That signal came through their newspaper, the Liberation Army Daily, which featured an article signaling support for an historic figure like Zhang Youxia, Zhang Guotao, who broke with Mao Zedong in the 30s. This was the first of six similar articles released following the reported arrest of Zhang Youxia.

Blurb:

Xi Jinping Has Turned China’s Military Against Him, and the Party’s Own Newspaper Proves It  Vision Times
from news.google.com

On Feb. 11, the Liberation Army Daily, the official newspaper of China’s military, published yet another article invoking Zhang Guotao, a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party who broke with Mao Zedong in the 1930s and is remembered in Party mythology as the archetype of treachery and “splitting the Party and the army.” The article accused Zhang Guotao of “carrying out activities to split the Party and the Red Army,” language that transparently targets two recently purged military leaders: Zhang Youxia, the former vice chairman of China’s top military command body (the Central Military Commission), and Liu Zhenli, the former chief of the Joint Staff Department, China’s most senior operational military commander.

This was the sixth such article since Jan.16, the date that online sources say Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were physically detained, eight days before their purge was officially announced on Jan. 24. All six articles share a revealing pattern: every one of them invokes the historical villain Zhang Guotao, and every one of them avoids mentioning Zhang Youxia or Liu Zhenli by name. The gap between the fury of the rhetoric and the absence of the actual targets’ names speaks volumes about how politically explosive these purges remain.

The six articles, with their dates and titles, are:

Jan. 18: “Courage Is Measured by What You Fear and What You Don’t”

Feb. 2: “Political Army-Building Special: Strong Organizations Make a Strong Army”