He Gave Nuclear Secrets to the CIA – RedState

Yesterday, we were all stunned to learn that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping had summarily dismissed and placed under investigation General Zhang Youxia, now former vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission; see New Round of Purges Destroys China’s People’s Liberation Army and Defense Establishment – ​​RedState. Zhang’s removal means that 37 of the 81 generals appointed since October 2022 were either under arrest or had simply disappeared.

Initial reports said Zhang was removed from his post because he “undermined Xi’s authority, encouraged political and corruption problems that impaired the party’s leadership of the armed forces, and harmed efforts to develop combat effectiveness.” Now more information is coming out and, if true, it is stunning.

According to a Wall Street Journal exclusive, during a briefing held on Saturday, it was revealed that Zhang was accused of over-calling Mark Milley during the transition period between Trump and Biden; see HUGE: Mark Milley Engaged with the Chinese to Commit Treason to Undermine Donald Trump – RedState. While Milley simply promised to warn China in case Donald Trump plots a thermonuclear Armageddon during his final days in office. Zhang was allegedly deceived by the CIA and passed Chinese nuclear secrets to the United States.

The briefing, attended Saturday morning by some of the military’s top brass, came just before China’s Ministry of National Defense made the bombshell announcement of an investigation into Gen. Zhang Youxia, once considered Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s most trusted military ally. That statement gave few details beyond an investigation into serious violations of party discipline and state laws.

But people close to the briefing — which has not been reported until now — said Zhang was under investigation for allegedly forming political cliques, a phrase describing efforts to build influence networks that undermine party unity, and for abusing his authority within the Communist Party’s top military decision-making body, known as the Central Military Commission.

Authorities are also scrutinizing his oversight of a powerful agency responsible for research, development and procurement of military hardware. Those familiar with the briefing said Zhang allegedly accepted huge sums of money in exchange for official promotions in this big-budget procurement system.

The most shocking allegation revealed during the closed-door briefing, according to the sources, was that Zhang leaked key technical data about China’s nuclear weapons to the United States.

Some evidence against Zhang came from Gu Jun, the former chief executive of China National Nuclear Corp., a state-owned company that oversees all aspects of China’s civil and military nuclear programs, the people familiar with the briefing said. Beijing announced an investigation into Gu on Monday for alleged serious violations of party discipline and state laws.

At Saturday’s press briefing, authorities revealed that the investigation into Gu had linked Zhang to a security breach in China’s nuclear sector, the sources said. Details of the breach were not disclosed during the briefing, the sources said.

To be clear, this story is based on a secret briefing that was leaked to the Wall Street Journal. Quite rightly, we don’t know where the source came from or how many hands the story passed through before reaching the press. What we can say with some degree of certainty is that having a CIA source embedded in your military high command does not give Xi a PR boost; it makes this latest purge look like a panicked act of weakness rather than the action of a strong leader rooting out corruption.

Some China specialists are very skeptical.

I’m a little skeptical of this claim @WSJ article that PLA Chief General Zhang Youxia “leaked key technical data on China’s nuclear weapons to the United States”

I could be wrong and the “people familiar with a high-level briefing” could be right, but here are some questions and… pic.twitter.com/xnTqyWDDDc

– Neil Thomas (@neilthomas123) January 25, 2026

I’m a little skeptical of this claim @WSJ piece that exceeds the PLA general Zhang Youxia “leaked basic technical data on Chinese nuclear weapons to the United States. » I could be wrong and the “people familiar with a high-level briefing” could be right, but here are some questions and thoughts:

1. How would Zhang do this? He should obtain these secrets from the China National Nuclear Corporation and pass/hand them over to an agent. But his communications are monitored and he rarely (if ever?) meets unaccompanied people. It would take a conspiracy large enough to go unnoticed for long. And for a seasoned general to betray everything that has given meaning to his life over the past decades. Possible, but very difficult. Incredible work by US intelligence agencies, if true. (To be clear, I think the journalists believed their source in Beijing was telling the truth; what I’m interested in is whether the source actually knew the full extent of the truth.)

2. Some suggest this story is made credible by reports in 2023 that a Russian deputy defense minister told Xi that former Foreign Minister Qin Gang helped pass nuclear secrets to the West. At the time, I found these reports very questionable: how could Qin get close to nuclear secrets, given that the MOFA and the PLA are so compartmentalized? And if this were true and known to Beijing, surely Qin would be purged rather than allowed to simply resign from the Central Committee? Plus, if I was Russian and had the information, I would keep it and use it to recruit Qin as a source.

3. Maybe the nuclear accusations were really made during a briefing on Saturday! As the article notes, internal accounts are not always true, and perhaps the truly unbelievable nature of Zhang’s purge meant that Beijing felt it needed to invent the most serious story possible to justify his detention, even for serious but less sensational corruption and disloyalty. Maybe that’s a justification. That would be a bit extreme, even for Xi, but I think it’s more credible.

4. A somewhat more plausible claim in the story is that Zhang took huge bribes to help Li Shangfu get promoted to the CMC in 2022. Yet this would require a shocking level of ignorance or bravado on the part of both Zhang and Li given how politics have evolved since 2012. This sounds exactly like so many pre-Xi corruption cases. I think it is very likely that Zhang was involved in the corruption scandals that rocked the public procurement bureaucracy in recent years and led to Li’s downfall. His political sin would be corruption, covering up for others in a corrupt conspiracy (already political clique-like behavior) and betraying Xi’s loyalty and trust by not implementing his vision of a cleaner, more competent fighting force.

5. The rest of the story is good! But the most scandalous details match rumors circulating in Beijing’s financial circles. These people may be right, but they could just be spreading nice stories. I don’t know what, if anything, the military/political elites are saying…

I appreciate rebuttals to my doubts! I am an avid reader of the two journalists who wrote this story. I’m just sharing these thoughts because studying China’s elite politics is really difficult, and I believe debate helps us get closer to trusting the truth.

At first glance, one might have wondered how Aldrich Ames could have betrayed 30 agents and more than 100 active operations in the USSR, given his minor role in the CIA. The answer is that bureaucracies are sloppy, and the higher you go in a bureaucracy, the easier it is to see things you shouldn’t see without anyone questioning you. Maybe Zhang didn’t steal nuclear secrets and was totally arrested for taking huge bribes. If that’s the case, why not stick to a simple story rather than inventing a cover story that makes Xi’s grip on power tenuous? The only way this would make sense is if another major wave of purges comes, and Zhang’s alleged nuclear theft is a feature of it.

The fact is that Xi gutted China’s military command and staff structure for some reason. Dismissal of these individuals, regardless of their level of competence or incompetence, will have a detrimental effect on China’s military capability. New people will have to be put in place. New relationships will be formed. Trust must be restored. All of this takes time, and I think Xi and China are running out of time.

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