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China is announcing that two of its top generals are under investigation. One of them is the nation's most senior general. Analysts suspect it's a political purge, capping a two-year campaign by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to clean out the ranks. NPR's John Ruwitch reports.
JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: The announcement came from a defense ministry spokesperson on Saturday. Here's a clip from state TV.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Mandarin).
RUWITCH: Generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli of the People's Liberation Army, or PLA, are being investigated, he says, for suspected serious violations of discipline and the law. It's a big deal because Zhang was the ranking vice chairman of China's central command, known as the Central Military Commission. Only Xi Jinping stood above him. Liu was also on the commission.
TAYLOR FRAVEL: This is really an unprecedented kind of decapitation of the leadership of the PLA.
RUWITCH: Taylor Fravel is an expert in Chinese security at MIT. He says it's hard to know exactly what led to the investigations. The government has said almost nothing. But Fravel says an editorial in the Army's official newspaper left a clue. It accused the two men of having, quote, "trampled and undermined the Central Military Commission Chairman responsibility system." This is arcane stuff, but he says it means something important, because the chairman is Xi Jinping.
FRAVEL: That is clearly suggesting that the main problem is that they have been defying Xi, which means that they have posed a political threat.
RUWITCH: In other words, they were purged. Bonny Lin is an expert on Chinese foreign and defense policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. She sees it as part of the multi-year cleanout of a military that's long been plagued by factionalism and corruption.
BONNY LIN: I think this is Xi Jinping being very set on making sure that China has the military capabilities to both defend itself from what I think those in Beijing increasingly view as a more problematic external environment.
RUWITCH: In other words, geopolitical pressure from the U.S. and its allies. Xi also wants a military that can do what he wants, including potentially taking the island of Taiwan by force. But Lin says there's a cost.
LIN: In the short- to medium-term, he's definitely degrading what they have in terms of leadership expertise.
RUWITCH: Zhang Youxia, now under investigation, was one of the very few leaders in the Chinese military with war fighting experience. Most now have none. John Ruwitch, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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