The sweeping purge of China's top military brass has stripped the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of its last institutional brakes, creating a highly volatile environment where a "loss-of-control crisis" could spark a war over Taiwan by 2027, a leading Japanese security expert warned in an exclusive interview with Storm Media.
On Jan. 24, 2026, China's Ministry of National Defense announced that Gen. Liu Zhenli (劉振立), chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia (張又俠) were placed under formal investigation for "serious violations of discipline and law."
As the officer responsible for the PLA's operational planning and force deployment, Liu's fall is widely seen as the culmination of a massive military purge that began in 2025. Today, only President Xi Jinping (習近平) and the most junior member of the CMC, discipline inspector Zhang Shengmin (張升民), remain standing among the commission's seven original seats.
The simultaneous removal of Liu and Zhang Youxia raises a pressing question: What is the real operational impact on the PLA?
According to Katsuya Yamamoto, the answer is terrifyingly simple: "If President Xi Jinping makes up his mind to take Taiwan by force, there is no one left who can stop him."
Yamamoto is a senior research fellow and head of the Strategy and Deterrence Unit at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. A retired rear admiral in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, he served as a defense attaché in Beijing and is regarded as a leading authority on Chinese military strategy.
Addressing the PLA purge, Yamamoto identified three interlocking dangers that constitute a severe crisis in the Taiwan Strait: the elimination of combat-experienced generals who served as rational brakes, a dysfunctional command structure composed of "yes men," and the risk of frontline soldiers acting unilaterally out of a desire for heroism.
The Fall of Zhang Youxia: Losing the Last 'Rational Brake'
Yamamoto began by examining the personal relationship at the root of the crisis: the bond between Xi and former CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia.
The two men were childhood friends whose families had been close for two generations. Zhang was indispensable to Xi during his consolidation of power. Furthermore, in a PLA that has gone more than three decades without combat, Zhang and Liu Zhenli were among the vanishingly rare officers with actual battlefield experience from the Sino-Vietnamese War.
That combat experience gave them a firsthand understanding of U.S. military capabilities—and a healthy professional respect for American power.
However, Yamamoto argued it was precisely this deep understanding that made them a threat in Xi's eyes. In a system that demands absolute loyalty, independent judgment and professional competence become liabilities.
Yamamoto likened the situation to Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) purge of Lin Biao (林彪), noting that Zhang's downfall marks the moment the PLA lost its last "rational brake."
"The order system is still functioning, but the organizational integrity has been lost," Yamamoto said.
The experienced officers have been replaced by a younger cohort unwilling to push back against Xi. These new generals will not tell Xi that "training is not yet sufficient" or that "the adversary is strong." Instead, Yamamoto warned, their only response to an order from Xi will be "Yes."
He described this as "a leadership without the capacity to be counseled"—a system capable of launching catastrophic operations because no one is willing to confront the commander-in-chief with the facts on the ground.
'Hero Hunger' and the Frontline Threat
Beyond the high command, Yamamoto identified the quality and behavior of frontline troops as the "biggest undetonated bomb" in the Taiwan Strait.
Today's PLA rank-and-file are largely drawn from the one-child generation. They lack combat experience and a sense of tactical restraint. Yamamoto pointed to the 2001 Hainan Island incident—where a Chinese fighter jet recklessly collided with a U.S. EP-3 surveillance aircraft—as a precedent.
In democratic militaries, such provocative behavior invites punishment. In the PLA, however, a soldier who causes an international incident through reckless action is often celebrated domestically as a hero. Yamamoto argued this "distorted evaluation system" creates a structural incentive for unilateral action at the unit level, which could detonate an accidental conflict well beyond what senior leaders intend.
Taiwan's Dual-Track Response
To counter this unpredictable threat, Yamamoto recommended that Taiwan pursue a dual-track response: maintaining physical de-escalation while waging an aggressive information campaign against Chinese gray-zone operations.
Every incident involving Chinese civilian ferries, unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), coast guard vessels, drones, or maritime militia should be documented and broadcast in real time across multiple languages, including English, Japanese, French, Thai, and Tagalog.
Regarding the China Coast Guard, Yamamoto used a football analogy: while the coast guard and navy play different positions, since a 2018 restructuring placed the coast guard under PLA command, they operate as a single coordinated team. Against this grinding attrition, Taiwan must implement "comprehensive surveillance and information warfare."
He stressed that sharing documented evidence of Chinese aggression with the international community is the most powerful form of deterrence available.
A Broken Hotline and a Dangerous Horizon
Compounding the risk is the collapse of traditional diplomatic tools. Yamamoto was categorical: the military hotline between China and its adversaries is no longer functional.
While Western governments view hotlines as a mechanism to prevent accidents when trust is absent, China views hotlines as something that exists only between trusted friends. With trust destroyed, Beijing simply will not answer the phone during a crisis.
Looking toward 2027, Yamamoto framed the threat around two irreversible scenarios. In the first, Xi decides to take Taiwan by force, and his purged command structure offers no resistance. In the second, Xi harbors no such intent, but frontline "hero hunger" combined with a dysfunctional command system triggers an accidental clash that spirals out of control. （Related： Exclusive | The Iran Strikes Bought Taiwan Time. A Japanese General Says Use It ｜ Latest ）
"The risk of both deliberate war and unintentional war is rising simultaneously," Yamamoto concluded. "That is the Taiwan Strait as it exists today."
