Water instead of fuel in China's nuclear missiles led to Xi's military purge?

Nuclear missiles stood ready in silos in western China to fly thousands of kilometres at the press of a button. However, some of them might not have fired at all in a crunch situation. That's because the lids of the silos wouldn't have opened, and the missiles were filled with water, and not fuel, according to reports that cited US intelligence. That was behind the firing of China's Rocket Force leadership in 2024, and might have even now led to the fall of General Zhang Youxia.

Zhang Youxia was China's top uniformed officer and an aide of President Xi Jinping. After Xi, Zhang was the senior-most in China's Military Commission, which is the country's top military command body.

Zhang, according to reports, was detained on January 19 for allegedly leaking China's nuclear-weapons data to the US, accepting bribes for promotions, and compromising combat readiness of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

"[We] must take strong and forceful measures to crack down on corrupt practices that undermine the building of combat abilities, and thoroughly investigate and root out those 'big rats' who tamper with military spending," The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Sunday, citing a PLA Daily article.

Zhang's fall is the biggest in a series of removals, especially the purge of the leadership of the PLA Rocket Force, which handles China's nuclear missile arsenal, in 2023 and 2024.

Zhang's arrest is as much about corruption as it is about China's military preparedness. Experts say corruption weakens China's combat readiness, and the purge is aimed at fixing that before it becomes a strategic liability. There are rumours that the investigation of Zhang is linked to nuclear security lapses.

Bloomberg had in 2024, citing US intelligence officials, reported "One example of corruption was that entire fields of silos in Western China were fitted with lids that prevented missiles from launching effectively".

It reported that the "military purge stemmed from serious equipment issues." It cited missiles that had been filled with water, instead of fuel, as an example.

"While there may be water in some of China's missiles now, it cannot be assumed that this will remain the case. Xi's dramatic response to the corruption indicates he is serious about building up China's nuclear forces," according to a January 2025 article in the Centre for Strategic and Studies (CSIS).

The timing of the big purge of Zhang comes even as China conducts drills near Taiwan, a country that it considers its territory as part of the One China Policy. China has also taken an aggressive stand recently against Japan over the Taiwan issue.

Many CIA analysts perceive 2027 to be the year when China could attack Taiwan. Operational readiness, therefore, must be on top of Xi's mind.

"I think [the purges] show not that Xi is distracted from operational issues, but that he's laser-focused on them," Jonathan Czin, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institute, told The Telegraph of the UK.

"He [Xi] wants the military to be up to snuff and prepared, and he's willing to be so unforgiving of the PLA because he's so focused on the underlying objectives," said Czin.

The Telegraph, speaking to former CIA analysts, said Xi's purge was beyond corruption and focused on getting the PLA operationally ready. The newspaper linked Zhang's removal to the purge of the leadership of the PLA Rocket Force too, that started over heavy lids and water-filled missiles.

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