China army purge targets group which undermined Xi's authority

After President Xi Jinping ousted a group of top generals whose careers overlapped for decades, state media accused them of “severely undermining” the Communist Party’s highest echelons of authority.

- Bloomberg

China sacked nine senior military officials from the ruling party on October 17 in a high-profile purge that removed several commanders and a member of the 24-man Politburo. The disgraced generals had challenged “the system where the CMC chairman bears ultimate responsibility,” the People’s Liberation Army Daily wrote in a front-page editorial, referring to Xi.

The publication compared the sacked leaders to senior military figures purged during Xi’s first term, saying their crimes were “the fermentation and mutation of the poisonous legacy” of Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou. State media once said Guo and Xu had “attempted to seize power within the party and the state.”