WASHINGTON/BEIJING — With the downfall of China’s top general, the United States has lost an important contact on Beijing’s top military body and now faces a People’s Liberation Army that increasingly lacks steady, experienced commanders, said former US officials and analysts.

China’s defense ministry said on Saturday that Zhang Youxia, second-in-command under President Xi Jinping as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), is under investigation. It is the latest and highest-profile purge of the country’s top military leadership amid Mr. Xi’s crackdown on corruption in the armed forces.

For Washington, Mr. Zhang’s surprising demise removes a respected and well-known figure within China’s military at a time when successive US administrations have worked to build senior-level contacts to avoid mishaps between the world’s two most powerful militaries.

Several former senior US officials told Reuters that Mr. Zhang’s dismissal came as a shock.

Mr. Xi allowed Mr. Zhang to communicate with the US during the Biden administration after a 17-month-long period during which China had cut off nearly all military-to-military communications following a visit to Taiwan by then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.

Such a senior-level connection – in China’s political system, Mr. Zhang outranks the defense minister – was seen as an important relationship and a channel that remained viable for further talks.

One of just a few leading officers with combat experience from China’s invasion of Vietnam in the late-1970s, Mr. Zhang was seen in the US as a competent adviser to Mr. Xi, who sits atop the Central Military Commission, now staffed by only one general, a career political commissar Zhang Shengmin.

“Who does Xi Jinping convene in a crisis if there’s only one person on his commission?” said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore who engaged with Mr. Zhang as a former US defense official.

Thompson said he believed Mr. Zhang was the one active-duty PLA officer who could give Mr. Xi objective advice about China’s military capabilities and shortcomings, as well as the human cost of conflict.

“There’s a risk that Xi Jinping is given bad advice by sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear,” he said. “That creates a risk of miscalculation.”

A senior US administration official said the White House had nothing to share regarding “reports of palace intrigue” in China, adding that the Trump administration is “building a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain.”

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment. The Chinese Embassy in Washington also did not respond.

NEED FOR INSIGHT AS THE PLA MODERNIZES
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has held talks multiple times with China’s Defense Minister Dong Jun – who does not sit on the CMC – since September, part of US efforts to improve communications with China over its military modernization, nuclear weapons build-up, and more aggressive posture toward US allies and actions in the Indo-Pacific.

But American officials have long prized contact with vice chairs of the CMC over the country’s Defense Ministry, which lacks command authority over China’s armed forces.

Among senior Chinese generals, Mr. Zhang was a known quantity to US officials, having joined a week-long military delegation to the US in May 2012 when he was a lower-level general.

David Stilwell, a former US Air Force General who served as the State Department’s top diplomat for East Asia in the first Trump administration, recalls that Mr. Zhang was the only Chinese officer who wanted to fly in one of the US military’s Osprey aircraft on that trip.

“He is very different from his fellow PLA brothers. He could have fit in very well in the US military,” Mr. Stilwell said, noting that he was keen to talk to US soldiers and try out US weapons, and struck the Americans as a professional rather than political soldier.

Still, Mr. Stilwell said senior-level engagement with CMC generals was typically perfunctory. Without Mr. Zhang to advise Mr. Xi, his main concern was that the PLA was more likely to believe a self-constructed narrative that they were ready for a “Taiwan adventure.”

“I think what you lose with Zhang Youxia gone is a voice of reason,” Mr. Stilwell said.

US interactions with senior CMC generals have been an infrequent feature of bilateral diplomacy over the past two decades.

Biden administration national security advisor Jake Sullivan was the last known senior US official to meet Mr.  Zhang when the two held talks in August 2024 in Beijing.

Eric Hundman, a Chinese military expert at Washington-based security consultancy BluePath Labs, said military-to-military exchanges under Mr. Xi, even at the CMC level, tended to be scripted.

“The PLA knows its capabilities fairly well and is not interested in moving on Taiwan before they think they’re ready. My question mark has always been how much Xi Jinping listens to them on that point,” Mr. Hundman said.

“To the degree that he’s getting worse advice, that would worry me,” he said.— Reuters

UNITED NATIONS — The demilitarization of Gaza will include decommissioning weapons through an agreed process “supported by an internationally funded buyback” program, the United States told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

Palestinian militant group Hamas retains control of just under half of Gaza following an October ceasefire deal brokered by US President Donald Trump. The agreement ties further Israeli troop withdrawals to Hamas giving up its weapons.

The United States – along with the 26 countries who have so far joined Mr. Trump’s so-called Board of Peace and in consultation with the Palestinian National Committee that it oversees – will apply pressure on Hamas to disarm, according to the US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz.

“Hamas must not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly or indirectly, in any form, period,” he told the 15-member council. “All military terror and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt.

“International, independent monitors will supervise a process of demilitarization of Gaza to include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning and supported by an internationally funded buyback and reintegration program,” he added.

His comments reflect point 13 of Mr. Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan.

HAMAS STILL HEAVILY ARMED, SAYS ISRAEL
When asked for more detail on the independent monitoring and proposed buyback program, a US State Department spokesperson said: “Discussions on implementation of phase 2, including demilitarization, are ongoing.”

Hamas recently agreed to discuss disarmament with other Palestinian factions and with mediators, sources have said. However, two Hamas officials told Reuters that neither Washington nor the mediators had presented the group with any detailed or concrete disarmament proposal.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Monday Washington believes disarmament by Hamas militants would come with some sort of amnesty for the Islamist group.

Hamas remains heavily armed, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon told the Security Council.

“It still holds thousands of rockets, anti-tank missiles, and tens of thousands of Kalashnikov rifles. In total, Hamas still holds roughly 60,000 assault rifles,” Mr. Danon said. “These weapons are used not only against Israel but against Gazans who oppose Hamas rule.”

INTERNATIONAL STABILIZATION FORCE FOR GAZA
The Security Council in November mandated Mr. Trump’s Board of Peace through 2027 and solely focused on the Gaza Strip. Russia and China abstained, complaining the US-drafted resolution did not give the United Nations a clear role in Gaza’s future.

The resolution described the board as a transitional administration “that will set the framework and coordinate funding for the redevelopment of Gaza” under Mr. Trump’s peace plan until the Palestinian Authority has satisfactorily reformed. It also authorized the board to deploy a temporary International Stabilization Force in Gaza.

“We salute and thank our friends who have agreed to contribute to the International Stabilization Force,” Mr. Waltz said. The United States has not yet announced which countries have agreed to contribute.

“The ISF will begin to establish control and stability, so that the Israeli Defense Forces can withdraw from Gaza based on standards, milestones and time frames linked to demilitarization,” said Mr. Waltz.

He added that these would be agreed upon by the Israeli military, the ISF and the guarantors for the ceasefire agreement – the United States, Egypt, and Qatar. — Reuters

AMAZON confirmed 16,000 corporate job cuts on Wednesday, completing a plan for around 30,000 since October, while leaving open the possibility of further reductions.

Reuters first reported last week that Amazon was planning a second round of job cuts as part of its broader goal under CEO Andy Jassy, who has been trying to reduce bureaucracy and abandon underperforming businesses.

Amazon said on Tuesday it was closing its remaining brick-and-mortar Fresh grocery stores and Go markets, despite years of effort, and said it was dropping its Amazon One biometric payment system, which scans the palm of a customer’s hand.

Although 30,000 represents a small portion of Amazon’s 1.58 million employees, who are mostly in fulfillment centers and warehouses, it is nearly 10% of its corporate workforce and represents the largest job cuts in its three decades, surpassing the 27,000 it pared between late 2022 and early 2023.

The job cuts were necessary to strengthen the company by “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy” at Amazon, its top human resources executive, Beth Galetti, said in a post.

Ms. Galetti left open the possibility of further reductions, saying some teams will continue to “make adjustments as appropriate.”

The latest cuts mark the second major round of layoffs in three months after Amazon pared 14,000 jobs in October, saying at the time that artificial intelligence and concerns over shifting corporate culture were to blame.

Amazon has also said it overhired during the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for online shopping skyrocketed.

“Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm – where we announce broad reductions every few months,” Ms. Galetti said in Wednesday’s note. “That’s not our plan,” she said.

‘PROJECT DAWN’
Amazon on Tuesday mistakenly sent an email appearing to refer to the layoff plan as “Project Dawn” to some Amazon Web Services staff, unsettling thousands of workers.

The full scope of the cuts could not be learned, but employees from multiple AWS units, the Alexa voice assistant, Prime Video, devices, advertising and last mile delivery, among others, indicated online and in emails to Reuters that they had been impacted. Additional roles affected include those in Kindle and supply chain optimization, a group within Amazon’s fulfillment unit.

Amazon, which began the corporate job cuts on Tuesday by announcing its plans to close the Fresh and Go stores, did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The job cuts also underscore how artificial intelligence is changing corporate workforce dynamics. Significant improvements in AI assistants are helping enterprises execute duties from routine administrative tasks to complex coding problems with rapid speed and precision, driving widespread adoption.

Mr. Jassy said last summer that rising use of AI tools would mean more automation of duties, leading to corporate job losses.

Executives at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos said last week that while jobs would disappear, new ones would spring up, with two telling Reuters that AI would be used as an excuse by companies planning to cut jobs anyway.

Tech giants, including Amazon, Facebook-parent Meta Platforms and Microsoft, sharply ramped up hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic demand surge and have lately been restructuring. UPS, Pinterest, and ASML all announced staff reductions in recent days.

Amazon has been investing in robotics at its warehouses to speed up packaging and deliveries for its e-commerce segment, reduce reliance on human labor and cut costs.

Shares in Amazon, which is set to report quarterly results next week, were down 2.1% in regular trading Wednesday.— Reuters