What’s going on in China if males under President Xi Jinping are dropping off one by one?

The curtain fell in the traditional manner: In the immense expanse of outer Mongolia’s ndörkhaan desert, in 1971, the cutting-edge Hawker Siddeley HS-121 Trident aircraft caught fire and caught fire. After a few hours, the Cultural Revolution military hero and People’s Republic of China Marshal Lin Biao, who was aboard the flight with his wife Ye Qun and son Lin Liguo, was denounced as a traitor. The senior marshal allegedly sought to flee after failing in an attempt to assassinate Chairman Mao Zedong, according to the People’s Republic of China.

According to their partly declassified investigation, even the Central Intelligence Agency found it difficult to distinguish reality from fiction on how and why the most renowned hero of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had been killed. There was no evidence that Lin’s alleged plot to murder Mao, Project 571, had begun: “No bullet was fired, no bomb exploded.” Lin may have even been executed while on vacation at the Peitaiho summer resort, according to the claim.

The event has been brought back from the pages of dusty history books as Chinese President Xi Jinping launches the greatest cleansing of the political system since the epic anti-corruption sweep of 2017, which resulted in the expulsion of more than 170 ministers and deputy ministers. Government employees number over 1.34 million, ranging from “flies” to “tigers” like Zhou Yongkang, the third-most powerful politician in the nation. In order for Xi to rule China without restraint, the purge was necessary.

Li Shangfu, China’s powerful defense minister, hasn’t been seen out in public since August, and according to western intelligence services, he was covertly let off from his job. General Li Yuchao, in control of the nation’s arsenal of both conventional and nuclear land-based missiles, has also vanished. He heads the PLA Rocket Force.

According to writer Frédéric Lemaître, four high-ranking police officers were sacked last year on the basis of both corruption allegations and charges of conspiring against Xi. This was one of the first signs that the purge was gathering momentum.

There are several explanations for what is taking on in China. Journalist Brendan Cole claims that President Xi is trying to prevent a Wagner Group-style praetorian insurrection, while other analysts believe that the president is in conflict with the establishment over concerns about his economic policies and a possibly deadly confrontation with Taiwan.

The purge, according to Michael Rowand, a researcher at the US Library of Congress’ Federal Research Division, is meant to get rid of potential rivals for Xi who could have accumulated an excessive amount of institutional power.