News that Zhang Youxia, the CCP military's number-two figure, has fallen has sent shockwaves at home and abroad. Zhang Youxia is not only the top-ranking general in China's armed forces, but also a "trusted confidant among trusted confidants" to Xi Jinping. The characterization given in a January 25 editorial in the PLA Daily — that he "seriously trampled on and undermined the system of CMC chairman responsibility" — reveals the true political core of the affair: any act that does not fully submit to the supreme leader's personal will is treated as anti-Party.
In the CCP's traditional political vocabulary, "the Party commands the gun" means that the military obeys the Party's collective power structure. But once the "CMC chairman responsibility system" is sanctified as an untouchable supreme principle, and "absolute obedience to the chairman personally" becomes the sole standard of loyalty, the nature of power has undergone a fundamental transformation: it is no longer the Party commanding the military, but an individual commanding the Party, which in turn commands the military. This step completes a qualitative shift from organizational totalitarianism to personal totalitarianism. The military is no longer the Party's armed force, but the personal instrument of power of the supreme ruler. In terms of institutional history, this marks the completion, within a modern political form, of the "restoration of imperial authority."
In the wake of the Zhang Youxia case, China's political landscape shows two simultaneous trends: the completion of personal dictatorship and the collapse of the institutional system. Since Deng Xiaoping, the CCP has maintained one-party rule, yet internally there remained a term-limit system, collective leadership, factional checks and balances, and safety boundaries. Though these mechanisms were not democratic institutions, they constituted the "least-bad system of rules," providing a minimal degree of predictability for the exercise of power. Since coming to power, Xi Jinping has, through anti-corruption campaigns, constitutional amendment, ideological reconstruction, and continuous purges, gradually dismantled these rules. And when the target of purges extends even to "the trusted confidant among trusted confidants," it means the regime no longer primarily operates through institutions, but depends entirely on the will and psychological stability of a single individual. This step marks both the completion of personal dictatorship and the start of the countdown to the totalitarian system's self-destruction.
Totalitarian politics follows one constant law: in the period of a leader's rising power, he purges his enemies; in the period of consolidated power, he purges his allies; in the period of absolute power, he purges his own confidants. Zhang Youxia belonged to the category of "trusted confidant among trusted confidants" — from a "red family" background, with deep seniority, a battle-tested officer, on close personal terms with Xi Jinping, and in long-standing control of the military's actual day-to-day operations. When the targets of Xi's purges moved from political rivals, factional rivals, and local power bases, to finally reach "the trusted confidant among trusted confidants," the political logic underwent a qualitative shift — from "I must eliminate my rivals" to "I must eliminate everyone who could possibly become a rival." When totalitarianism reaches this stage, it is no longer factional struggle, but absolute power annihilating every potential check on itself. That confidants themselves are being purged shows that the logic of purging has entered a stage of "paranoid rule" — you need not oppose me; merely being capable of influencing me is enough to mark you for elimination. From the standpoint of political psychology, this signals that Xi Jinping has entered a classic structure of paranoid, persecution-driven rule. This is the self-cannibalizing stage of dictatorship. It also marks the entry of dictatorial psychology into a danger zone: the safer one becomes, the more fearful; the more fearful, the more one purges; the more one purges, the more isolated one becomes. This is the common psychological trajectory of every personal-totalitarian regime on its way to self-destruction.
Xi Jinping has completed his personal dictatorship, but the systemic risk to the CCP regime is rising sharply in step with it. The greatest shock delivered by the Zhang Youxia case is psychological, aimed at the entire bureaucratic class within the system — it sends a signal to every official: the deeper your seniority and the greater your accomplishments, the more dangerous your position. This directly destroys the long-standing "safety expectation" within the CCP bureaucracy. In the past, the system's implicit rule was that as long as you stayed loyal to the organization and did not openly challenge the core, you could retire safely — none of that holds any longer. The only rational strategy left for bureaucrats is to shift entirely into a mode of passive inaction and self-protection — a natural consequence of not daring to decide, not daring to take responsibility, not daring to innovate, and seeking only to avoid mistakes. This kind of "comprehensive risk-averse bureaucratic behavior" will rapidly drain the state's governing capacity, and will in turn provoke even more intense purges, forming a self-consuming structure for the regime.
The CCP has long prided itself on being a "revolutionary party with organizational strength." Organizational strength implies hierarchical order, promotion pathways, internal trust, and safety boundaries. But once term limits, succession mechanisms, factional balance, and safety guarantees have all vanished, the party ceases to be an organizational community, and degenerates instead into a collection of bureaucrats who regard one another with suspicion under the shadow of one man's personal power. Once organizational trust breaks down, the regime, although still able to maintain itself through repression, has already lost its long-term governing capacity, transforming into a hollow machine driven by fear.
Another structural consequence of personal dictatorship is that the regime inherits all of the ruler's psychological weaknesses: suspicion, volatility, aversion to dissent, and fear of losing control. From this point on, the regime is no longer a system of institutions, but a psychological projection. This is precisely the true starting point of the system's collapse. Once fear breaks through the red line, it spreads rapidly, and no rank is safe any longer; the bureaucracy enters a mode of "doomsday survival," and the Party transforms from a political organization into a temporary alliance for survival. The state presents a performative structure of "prosperity on paper, exhaustion in reality" — distorted economic data, distorted fiscal information, distorted social-stability indicators, distorted assessments of military readiness. Once a genuine crisis strikes, this false structure will collapse instantly, and the regime will have already lost the capacity to correct course.
Looking back at the Lin Biao incident of 1971, one sees only its dramatic surface: the supreme vice-commander fled and died in a plane crash. But what was truly fatal was that it destroyed the legitimizing narrative of the Cultural Revolution. From 1971 onward, although the Cultural Revolution continued for another five years, its spiritual legitimacy was already dead. Everything that followed amounted to nothing more than mechanical enforcement and widespread passive resistance. If even the "vice-supreme-commander" could overnight become a "traitor," then any political act could be reversed at any moment — from then on, political faith was thoroughly hollowed out, leaving only surface compliance. The Zhang Youxia case is triggering the same structural dynamic: yesterday's supreme model of loyalty has today become the negative example of one who "trampled on the chairman responsibility system" — this in itself directly destroys the very narrative of "absolute loyalty," and the regime's capacity to mobilize through political propaganda will decline sharply. Rule persists, but belief has died.
Historically, the Cultural Revolution did not truly die in 1976, but in the moment Lin Biao's plane crashed in 1971. The five years that followed were merely a corpse that had not yet fallen over. The same holds true today: the Zhang Youxia case marks the self-negation of the legitimacy of rule in the Xi Jinping era. From this point on, the myth of loyalty is bankrupt, the myth of institutions is bankrupt, the myth of anti-corruption is bankrupt, and the myth of the trusted confidant is bankrupt — the system is no longer a party organization; all that remains is naked jungle law. This is not a political system — it is the ecology of beasts.
More critically, the "legitimacy of development" on which the CCP has relied for survival since reform and opening up is being wiped out in parallel. Stagnant economic growth, fiscal strain, the collapse of the property sector, and soaring youth unemployment have destroyed the foundation of the bargain of "trading development for compliance." And what the Zhang Youxia case destroys is the "legitimacy of order." Once society recognizes that the system can neither deliver growth nor guarantee stable order, both pillars of ruling legitimacy collapse simultaneously.
Institutional political science holds one basic law: the more concentrated the control, the lower the system's resilience. China's regime today exhibits five historic extremes: the highest-ever concentration of power, the lowest-ever capacity for institutional self-correction, the lowest-ever degree of information authenticity, the lowest-ever level of bureaucratic trust, and a succession mechanism reduced to zero. Together, these five factors form a structure that appears extremely stable on the surface but is extremely fragile underneath — an ultra-high-risk structure. This kind of highly concentrated, low-resilience regime structure is the dangerous hallmark of the late stage of totalitarianism: hard as steel on the surface, yet shattering into pieces the instant it breaks.
Many believe the end of totalitarianism must come from a popular revolution. But the more common outcome for large modern totalitarian regimes is collapse from within, rather than being overthrown by external force. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was not a street revolution — the empire simply dissipated overnight. China today is retracing this same path: economic downturn, fiscal strain, bureaucratic paralysis, a politicized military, institutional hollowing-out — larger in scale, but identical in logic. Once the system has been reduced to nothing but a single individual, the day that individual disappears is the day the regime disappears.
The Zhang Youxia case is a watershed moment in a political cycle. Its true historical significance lies in the fact that the CCP has formally transitioned from institutionalized intra-party oligarchic rule to institution-less personal totalitarianism. The completion of personal totalitarianism is, precisely, the starting point of totalitarian self-destruction. Throughout history, every instance of personal totalitarianism has appeared invincible on the surface while hollowing out from within — and once that hollowness reaches a critical point, the slightest blow brings total collapse. Xi Jinping has reached the absolute summit of power, while at the same time pushing the entire CCP totalitarian system to the edge of a cliff. The question facing the CCP today is no longer "how much longer can Xi Jinping remain in power," but rather: can a nation that has already lost its institutional skeleton withstand one genuine crisis? The moment the answer becomes "no," that is the moment totalitarianism truly meets its end.