Executive Summary:
- Zhong Shaojun, who served as Xi Jinping’s secretary for over 20 years, was purged on August 28. Assigned to Xi in 2002, he rose to help lead the Central Military Commission General Office in 2013, a crucial role in the People’s Liberation Army, despite having no military background.
- Zhong’s purge follows a demotion in 2024 in which he was transferred to the post of political commissar of the National Defense University and signals Xi’s determination to purge even lifelong friends and personal retainers—individuals his rectification campaign had yet to touch.
- Rectification within the armed forces will continue, but each successive wave of purges will yield less shock than the last and leave Xi dependent on further removals to sustain his authority.
On August 28, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee announced the removal of 12 individuals from their positions as deputies to the congress. [1] Among them were generals Zhang Youxia (张又侠) and Liu Zhenli (刘振立), who were simultaneously removed from their posts on the state Central Military Commission (CMC) (Xinhua, August 28, [a], [b]). Beyond the attention paid to Zhang and Liu, the list also included Zhong Shaojun (钟绍军), a key figure who received comparatively little notice.
Zhong once directed the CMC General Office. More significantly, he served as Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s personal secretary starting in 2002, later serving as his military secretary. Since Deng Xiaoping, every Chinese Communist Party “core” (核心) leader has installed his most trusted aide inside the army to serve as overseer (China Brief, July 21, 2025). Each of those aides made it to retirement intact. Zhong is the first to fall.
Xi’s Foremost Personal Retainer
Zhong’s rise began with Xi’s personal affairs. Born in 1968, he studied at Hangzhou University, then worked without distinction in Zhejiang provincial bureaucracy until 2002 when, at 34, he was assigned as personal secretary to the province’s newly arrived Party chief, Xi Jinping, responsible for arranging the leader’s daily life (Resoundnews, October 26, 2025; VOA, August 29). When Xi moved to Shanghai in early 2007, Zhong was the only one he took, and that October he followed Xi to Zhongnanhai (Waican, May 24, 2013).
In 2013, freshly in power, Xi put Zhong into the CMC General Office as deputy director and head of the Chairman’s Office, granting him the rank of senior colonel despite him having no prior military service (New York Times, September 30, 2015; China Brief, March 7, 2016). He was promoted rapidly, rising to the rank of major general in 2016, director of the General Office in 2017, and lieutenant general in 2019 (Asia Society, October 3, 2024). As head of the CMC General Office, a key functional organ responsible for coordinating and supporting the CMC’s work, Zhong held a pivotal post. Only two men had filled the same overseer role before Zhong: Wang Ruilin (王瑞林), Deng Xiaoping’s secretary from 1952, and Jia Ting’an (贾廷安), a civilian who became Jiang Zemin’s secretary in 1982 (SCMP, January 4, 2004, December 9, 2018).
Zhong’s Professional Failures Likely Caused Downfall
Zhong’s purge caps a decade of military rectification that has worked its way from the outer edge to the innermost core. This process has unfolded in five stages. First were the rivals, Guo Boxiong (郭伯雄) and Xu Caihou (徐才厚), who had controlled the military before Xi’s ascension. Then came the inherited officials who capitulated—Zhang Yang (张阳) and Fang Fenghui (房峰辉), two holdovers from the Hu Jintao era who switched allegiance to Xi, only to be purged in late 2017 (Xinhua, November 28, 2017; Ministry of National Defense [MND], January 9, 2018). Next were Xi’s own appointees, Miao Hua (苗华) and He Weidong (何卫东), expelled from the Party and the military in October 2025 (MND, October 17, 2025). Then came Zhang Youxia, a lifelong family acquaintance of Xi’s (SCMP, October 24, 2017; Xinhua, January 24; China Brief, January 26).
Zhong appears to be the first member of Xi’s inner circle targeted in the purge. He left the General Office in 2024, initially disappearing with no public announcement (China Brief, May 24, 2024). He resurfaced as the political commissar of the National Defense University—a sidelining that stopped well short of detention—but remained involved in some public functions associated with his previous role. When Singapore’s permanent secretary for defense visited Beijing in August 2025, its defense ministry listed Zhong Shaojun among the officials he met (MINDEF Singapore, August 18, 2025). Beijing’s readout of that meeting omitted him entirely (MND, August 19, 2025). Two months later, domestic media named Xia Zhihe (夏志和) as Zhong’s replacement in the post (Caixin, October 26, 2025).
Two explanations are commonly offered for Zhong’s downfall. The first is corruption, which is the consistent official narrative behind these moves, and Zhong almost certainly took money, as is typical at his rank. Graft alone almost never ends a senior official’s career, however, and so the corruption charge is largely uninformative—investigative journalists have spent over a decade documenting the fortunes of the Party elite, Xi’s family included (Bloomberg, June 29, 2012).
The second explanation is incompetence. It is possible that Zhong failed in his duties overseeing the military, allowing personnel problems to persist even at the top of the CMC, for instance by either missing or tolerating the networks that Miao Hua and He Weidong built inside the high command. A transfer to the NDU is a typical solution within the system for handling such a failure: Zhong likely retained Xi’s protection, allowing the leader to save face by halting the accusations against him. In this way, Zhong’s treatment reflected that of Jia Ting’an, who drew accusations for years but nevertheless kept his rank (FRI, December 1, 2015). Now, however, Zhong has lost everything, signaling that Xi himself finally chose to cut him loose.
Rectification Continues
Zhong’s removal alleviates the diminishing returns to terror. When the Party could still buy loyalty with institutional resources, purges could remain surgical and rare. With those incentives dwindling, fear must do the heavy lifting, even as each wave of purges yields less shock than the last. The fatal flaw in purges is exempting the inner circle, since the men who share the leader’s table then operate with impunity in plain sight. Xi has eliminated that sanctuary, finally sacrificing a 20-year retainer who possessed no power base of his own.
Xi will be unable to halt the decay, however, and can rely on little other than continuous rectification—“self-revolution” (自我革命)—to enforce military obedience (Xinhua, November 30, 2025). Shockwaves from Zhang Youxia’s investigation have largely dissipated, and an August 24 call for reports of irregular purchasing within the Rocket Force signals no letup in the PLA’s anticorruption drive (Military Procurement Network, August 24).
The purge nevertheless remains selective. Proximity to Xi retains its value, determining not only who falls first, but how harshly each case is settled. Toward officials on the outer rings, Xi has shown almost no mercy. Two successive defense ministers, Wei Fenghe (魏凤和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福), lacked personal ties to him and each received a suspended death sentence with commutation restricted, the heaviest penalty currently applied at subnational rank or above (Foreign Policy, May 22). Qin Gang (秦刚), the former foreign minister who spent years in close attendance on Xi, was only stripped of his posts without criminal prosecution (Washington Post, September 8, 2024). Which of these paths Zhong’s case follows remains to be seen.
Conclusion
Zhong Shaojun’s removal shows how little remains of the means by which Xi once held his elite together. A leader who can no longer offer material rewards to his officials and who no longer shares a common project with them has only fear to work with. Keeping fear at the same level requires sustaining the scale of the purge, and bringing down men close to him from time to time, though the supply of such men is finite.
Notes
[1] Technically, these deputies to the National People’s Congress were recalled by the standing committees of the people’s congresses of the provinces or the units that elected them. On August 28, acting on the results of those recalls, the NPC Standing Committee announced the termination of their status as deputies. Under the PRC’s electoral law, only the electoral bodies and their standing organs have the authority to recall the People’s Congress deputies they elected.
The post Zhong Shaojun’s Removal Breaches Xi’s Innermost Circle appeared first on Jamestown.