Yes-Men with Missiles: Taiwan at the Edge of Xi’s Silence

 

Xi fires generals, crowns loyalists, and silences dissent. History shows what comes next: overconfidence, miscalculation, and war. Taiwan sits in the crosshairs while truth is purged from China’s command room.

I keep hearing that China is the world’s safe bet, the steady hand in a chaotic age. I don’t buy it. Not now. Not after watching Xi Jinping rip the top off his own military and call it discipline. When a leader starts firing generals instead of listening to them, history doesn’t whisper. It shouts.

On January 24, China’s defense ministry quietly confirmed what insiders already feared. Two of the most senior generals, including Zhang Youxia, were under investigation. This was not routine. This was seismic. The last time China purged its military leadership at this level was 1971, when Mao’s chosen heir Lin Biao died fleeing an alleged coup. That episode ended in paranoia, paralysis, and decades of scars. I look at today and feel that same chill. When the palace goes silent, the storm is already inside.

The purge is not happening in isolation. In 2025 alone, Chinese authorities investigated over 1,000,000 people for corruption and political deviation. That is 60% more than just two years earlier. Those numbers are not about cleaning house. They are about fear as policy. The Communist Party sits above the law, beyond the reach of a free press, policing itself with purges instead of sunlight. Cadres retreat into tight circles, trust evaporates, reformers freeze. Power becomes lonely, and loneliness breeds bad decisions.

Nowhere is this more dangerous than inside the 2,000,000-strong People’s Liberation Army, the force meant to fight China’s wars. The PLA’s own newspaper accused the fallen generals of insubordination and of poisoning the army’s “political ecology.” That phrase stuck with me. It sounds clean, even noble, but it hides something ugly. Politics is now valued more than experience. Loyalty matters more than judgment. Obedience outranks truth. A sharp knife in the wrong hands still cuts the holder.

On paper, China looks terrifying. Its navy is larger than America’s. Pentagon estimates say Beijing plans 9 aircraft carriers by 2035, compared with America’s 11. Its nuclear arsenal is projected to reach at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, double what it held in 2023. Hardware sells fear. Numbers impress. But wars are not spreadsheets. They are chaos, friction, and human error. And that is where Xi’s purge becomes truly dangerous.

I keep coming back to Taiwan. American officials believe Xi has ordered the PLA to be capable of taking the island by 2027. Some analysts think Taiwan could not hold out long without outside help. The United States approved an $11.1bn arms package in December, but there is no treaty that forces Washington to fight. That gray zone is exactly where miscalculation thrives. When leaders believe their own propaganda, they roll the dice with other people’s lives.

The seas around China are already a pressure cooker. The Taiwan Strait is a constant flashpoint. The East China Sea simmers with disputes involving Japan. The South China Sea stays hot with overlapping claims. Chinese jets buzz Western aircraft. Warships shadow each other at dangerous distances. One collision, one misread signal, one nervous trigger finger, and the world holds its breath. In moments like that, a leader needs advisers who can say “stop.” Who will say it now?

Zhang Youxia once could. He had something rare among China’s top brass: real war experience, earned fighting Vietnam in 1979. That conflict should still haunt Beijing. China went in confident and came out bloodied, exposed, and humiliated. Superior numbers and revolutionary pride did not save it from logistics failures, poor coordination, and fierce resistance. Overconfidence turned into a lesson written in graves. The past does not forgive those who ignore it.

I also think of Russia. I think of Ukraine. Moscow marched in with swagger in 2022, expecting Kyiv to fall in 3 days. It did not. Russian forces underestimated Ukrainian resistance, overestimated their own readiness, and paid the price. By 2024, independent estimates put Russian casualties, killed and wounded, well over 1000,000. Equipment losses ran into the thousands. Sanctions hollowed out the economy. Prestige burned. Xi has studied this war. He has heard Western leaders warn him what an attack on Taiwan would do to China’s economy. And yet he is building a system that punishes dissent and rewards silence.

Since 2022, Xi has ejected 5 of the 6 uniformed officers on the Central Military Commission, the PLA’s highest command body. What remains is Xi himself and a political commissar focused on fighting graft, not fighting wars. This is not a team. It is an echo chamber. Imagine a crisis over Taiwan erupting at sea or in the air. Missiles lock on. Ships maneuver. Allies debate. Phones ring. Xi asks for advice. Who tells him the truth? Who tells him the risks are enormous even with all that shiny hardware?

I write this  because neutrality feels dishonest. I am worried. Not because China is weak, but because it is strong and increasingly blind. Yes-men in uniform are not a sign of confidence. They are a confession of fear. Power that cannot tolerate dissent is power afraid of its own reflection.

Xi prizes obedience. He is 72. Few doubt he will use the next party conference to cement his rule. Stability, he will say. Certainty, his spokesmen will repeat. But certainty without humility is a trap. History shows it again and again, from Vietnam to Ukraine. Overconfidence is the deadliest weapon a leader can wield.

If Xi truly wants to secure China’s future, he should remember this: armies do not fail first on the battlefield. They fail first in the mind, when truth is replaced by loyalty and caution by applause. The world should worry, not because war is inevitable, but because the guardrails are being quietly removed.

 

 

This article is part of a larger idea I explore in “China’s Military Mirage: The Overestimated Power of the People's Liberation Army (PLA)”, one of my short books on Google Play. Read it here on Google Play: China’s Military Mirage.