Kevin Rudd
speaker
641 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 14 Jul
Kevin Rudd’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It's not just that we've seen multiple senior Chinese commanders, including those in the Central Military Commission, removed.
But in the last several years, we've seen a hundred senior PLA generals purged as well.
What's it about?
Why has he done it?
A, he genuinely thinks that corruption in the military impedes the professional capacity of the military to execute its mission in relation to Taiwan or other contingencies.
The second is, and here it's harder for us to reach these judgments, but I have some confidence in them.
He's not really prepared to brook a whole lot of internal dissent within the military
or alternative views.
The most recent purge, for example, of Zhang Youxia, who was the effectively deputy commander of the Central Military Commission, a lifelong friend of Xi Jinping's, going way back when and through their fathers, reflected an ultimately unemotional view that unless you are 1,000% on board the Xi Jinping bus,
then it's not the place for you.
Here we have to speculate.
It's not as if they were engaged in preparations for a military coup.
That's not the nature of the beast.
It's more internal disagreement, I suspect, about the nature of levels of military preparedness for, shall we say, deploying the PLA against and into Taiwan contingencies.
So an officer who says in a meeting, I think this would be a disaster...
It's not long for the world.
Or an officer who says, senior officer who may say, comrade chair, I think we have two or three capability sets which need to be further improved.
That would be the more cautious way of putting it.
Whereas my suspicion is that Xi Jinping's response to that will be to say, you guys are supposed to be providing absolute confidence in the system that we're ready.
How can I therefore be trustful of your leadership of the system when you yourself are the sources of doubt?
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