Andrew Bolt:
I know I touched on this last night, but I’ve got to come back to the purge that China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, has just made of his top general. And not just him because the deeper you look into it, the more ominous and extraordinary it is. Now, just like Stalin, actually, before World War II, Xi has conducted a huge purge of his army and defence officials. Although unlike Stalin, he hasn’t had them all shot yet. His regime has just accused Xi’s most senior general and a longtime friend, Zhang Youxia of extraordinary crimes like revealing nuclear secrets to the US, taking bribes, fostering political problems, whatever that means.
Add to that, all the others accused of crimes and purged. You have a look, if you do a diagram of everyone who was in the last central military commission headed by Xi himself, the top military body, almost all of them have been arrested or disappeared. And that’s just the most senior army officials. Also gone on more junior ones, including the senior officers of China’s rocket force, which oversees the strategic nuclear missiles. As well as a defence minister, he’s been disappeared, a foreign minister, he’s been disappeared over the past couple of years. It’s extraordinary, the kind of purge you haven’t seen in China for decades.
Now, this could show that Xi Jinping is cementing his power, or it could show that he’s having to fight off a challenge. Who knows? Joining me is Peter Jennings, a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department, now adjunct fellow at the IPA. Peter Jennings, thank you for joining us. What does this mean, and particularly given that Xi has repeatedly warned his army to be prepared for war next year, the year that Xi wants to take over Democratic Taiwan, which he claims is China. A purge like this seems to me to leave the army weaker, or is it more malleable?
Peter Jennings:
Well, it’s certainly more malleable, and you’re quite right to point out that this is Stalinist in its origin. In fact, Stalin was one of Xi Jinping’s favourite authors. As a teen, he read deeply into Marxist-Leninism, but particularly Stalin. So he knows about purges, and Xi has been using purges across the military, the intelligence agencies and the Communist Party ever since he’s been general secretary from 2012. What I think’s particularly interesting about the military is that I think there’s more to it than just destabilising the generals and making sure that an alternate power base isn’t created. I think there’s also a fight going on where the generals are being resistant to some degree to Xi’s direction to say, “Be ready for war, for an invasion of Taiwan in 2027.” And as far as General Zhang is concerned, effectively, the head of the military that’s just been purged now, the key crime that is being written about in Chinese language papers is to say that he was too slow in implementing what Xi Jinping wanted in terms of military reforms, and this was damaging PLA combat capability.
So there’s two elements. There’s the purging to make sure that Xi Jinping is on top and no one can question him, or come near him, or present an alternate source of power. And then there’s a fight about how well-prepared is the People’s Liberation Army to do what Xi has directed it to do, and that’s be ready for war by 2027. They clearly don’t feel that they can be, and Xi is trying to make sure that he’ll have leadership in place that will at least say to him, “Yes, leader, that’s what we can do.”
Andrew Bolt:
That is very ominous because you’re absolutely right. The top general he’s just purged is the only one apparently with real war experience, having been part of the Chinese invasion of Vietnam. And the only reason they’d be in his way is if they were saying no to his yes in… Be ready to attack. That is ominous, Peter. Meanwhile, given that, there’s something else that worries me. China has tightened its influence on Taiwan’s main opposition parties, it seems. It very much seems because those opposition parties, which aren’t really as independent minded as the government, independent from China, they have combined to stop the Taiwanese government from passing a bill to spend an extra $60 billion to protect the island from a Chinese attack. What’s going on there?
Peter Jennings:
Well, there is and always has been a fifth column of Communist Party influence in Taiwan, which seems now to be coming back up to the surface. In terms of opinion polls and attitudes of the Taiwanese population, particularly the young, Andrew, there’s 80%, 90% support for the status quo, for Taiwan to remain not under the control of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. There’s only a handful of octogenarians for the most part that might have a different view about that. And yet all of a sudden we now see these organised groups coming forward, which seems to be challenging the position of the Taiwanese government. I think that can be traced back to mainland influence, Communist Party influence and money. And it reflects the fact that Taiwan has two huge fights on its hands.
It’s got to be prepared to defend itself against China’s military aggression, but it also has to deal with a very serious interference, domestic interference and foreign influencing threat. And China is pushing this as hard as it possibly can. This all goes back to Xi Jinping’s 2027 deadline, be ready for war. And the mainland is using every instrument at its disposal to try and make Taiwan weak because they’d much rather take it through capitulation than actually having to fight a military operation for it.
Andrew Bolt:
Yes, and meanwhile, the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln has reached waters not that far. The Indian Ocean, not that far from Iran so that we could expect a war there very soon. Peter Jennings, it’s a very uncertain world. Thank you so much for your time.
This transcript of Peter Jennings speaking on The Bolt Report – Sky News Australia from 27 January 2026 has been edited for clarity.
