The Chinese divergence

When the father refuses to become an uncle

The image circulating on Telegram and X, senior figures in China’s Central Military Commission crossed out, one by one, looks chaotic at first glance.

But structurally, it’s the opposite.

Where the late Soviet system hollowed out, and where Putin and Trump drift into symbolic fatherhood, China under Xi Jinping is doing something colder and more deliberate.

It is pre-emptively destroying the “uncle” class.

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What the purge actually signals

The reports concern the effective removal or sidelining of senior PLA figures, including:

• Zhang Youxia

• Liu Zhenli

within the Central Military Commission.

The key point is not who was purged, but what roles they represented.

These men were not charismatic leaders.
They were institutional fathers:

• Career military figures

• Known internally

• Socialised into the system

• Capable of acting as alternative moral reference points

In other words: potential “Uncle Vovas”.

Xi is not allowing that layer to exist.

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Late Soviet vs late CCP: the fork in the road

This is where the comparison becomes sharp.

Late Soviet / Putin / MAGA systems:

• Allow intermediaries to absorb blame

• Preserve the supreme figure as morally intact

• Drift into symbolic fatherhood

• Become emotionally dependent on one person

Xi’s system:

• Refuses symbolic diffusion

• Eliminates alternative loyalty nodes

• Centralises fear, not affection

• Ensures there is only one vertical axis

This is not instability.
It is authoritarian risk management.

Xi has studied the Soviet collapse obsessively. One of its lessons was simple:

Never let the system turn the leader into a kindly uncle people can appeal to.

Uncles generate expectations.
Expectations generate disappointment.
Disappointment fractures loyalty.

Xi wants none of that.

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Why this looks “ridiculous” and why it isn’t

From the outside, a shrinking Central Military Commission looks absurd. One chairman, one loyalist, silence elsewhere.

But from inside the logic of control, it is brutally rational.

• Fewer nodes = fewer rival narratives

• No intermediaries = no moral appeals

• No appeals = no symbolic debt

Xi is not trying to be loved.
He is trying to be unavoidable.

That is the key contrast with Putin and Trump.

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Putin and Trump: the uncle trap

Putin and Trump both arrive at the same structural failure from different directions.

They preside over systems where:

• Institutions are distrusted

• Elites are fragmented

• Bureaucracies are blamed

• And followers still need someone to believe in

So the leader becomes:

• A father

• A protector

• A misunderstood hero

• A last refuge

This is why Russian soldiers film Telegram appeals to Putin.
This is why QAnon insists Trump is secretly fighting.

Both systems are now emotionally leveraged by their base.

That is not power.
That is hostage-taking by belief.

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China’s bet: fear over faith

Xi’s purge strategy is an explicit rejection of that path.

No sentimental loyalty.
No “if only he knew”.
No last appeals.

Only discipline, rotation, disappearance.

This makes China:

• More stable in the short term

• Less flexible in the long term

• And far more brittle if the centre ever genuinely fails

But it avoids the specific collapse mode we see in Russia and MAGA: the orphaned follower problem.

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• Late Soviet Union shows what happens when belief dies but ritual remains

• Putin and Trump show what happens when systems collapse into father figures

• Xi shows what happens when a regime learns that lesson and chooses fear instead

All three are post-legitimacy systems.

They differ only in how they manage the emotional residue.

Russia and MAGA are clinging to uncles. China is quietly deleting them.

And history is very clear on this part:

• Systems built on love collapse loudly

• Systems built on fear collapse suddenly

The only question is which failure mode arrives first, and who is standing closest when it does.