A recent avalanche of chatter about an attempted military coup in China makes for breathless headlines on fringe social platforms across much of East Asia today, January 26, but the sober facts emerging from established news agencies suggest – at least for now – a far more familiar, and arguably far more chilling, reality in Beijing: an internecine purge of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) engineered by President – for life - Xi Jinping to obliterate any semblance of alternative authority.

Officially, Beijing has announced investigations into two of its most senior military figures of late - General Zhang Youxia and General Liu Zhenli - accusing both men of “serious violations of discipline and law,” a catch-all euphemism that, in Chinese Communist Party parlance, usually denotes the process of political elimination is underway rather than either being offered any form of transparent legal process.

Until recently, Zhang was not some backbench bureaucrat but the vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), effectively second-in-command of the PLA, and a man long considered to be a key figure in Xi’s inner circle.

Western news agencies such as Reuters have already reported “abnormal” issues in the form of China’s “military leadership changes” and sources in Taiwan indicate Taipei is closely monitoring the situation across the Strait.

As is, it appears there is at least a coordinated insurrection, albeit moving in slow-motion, aimed at unseating the supreme leader, that Xi Jinping deems dangerous enough to put down.

Coupled to this is the sudden rise in Chinese slogans such as ‘Save the Party’ and ‘Save the Nation’ among parts of the overseas Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, while on opposition social feeds it is being claimed Beijing power structure now hangs in the balance.

At present though, there is no public evidence that Zhang or Liu ever moved to mobilised troops against Xi, but what is evident is that their disappearance from the public stage parallels an extraordinary hollowing-out of the CMC. With only Xi himself and the anti-corruption czar Zhang Shengmin now staffing China’s top military decision-making body, the PLA’s senior command looks stripped to the bone.