Chinese President Xi Jinping transferred General Zhao Zongqi, the powerful commander of the Western Theater of the People’s Liberation Army, considered the man responsible for the seven-month military confrontation with India in eastern Ladakh, and replaced him with General Zhang Xudong, who has never served along the Indian border.
The changing of the guard in the leadership of the Western Theater Command has raised hope in New Delhi that General Zhao’s replacement will not be so vitriolic anti-India. Gen Zhao, who had also engineered the 2017 Doklam conflict with India, has been seen as a hard-line against India and Bhutan.
This is the first time that an officer appointed to lead the Western Theater Command has no experience serving on the Indian border. General Zhang is 58 years old, much younger than Zhao, who reached the retirement age of 65 in the summer of this year.
“The tone and demeanor of the PLA commander during the upcoming meeting of military commanders would shed some light on the complex undercurrents in the PLA,” said an Indian military commander, requesting anonymity.
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“We are keeping our fingers crossed,” the official quoted above said, adding that the Indian side expected some clarity when the army commanders of the two countries hold the next round of talks on the clash in the eastern sector of Ladakh.
Chinese observers said there was no information to indicate that General Zhang, unlike his predecessor, had political ambitions and was expected to make decisions on professional merit.
In Indian military circles, Gen Zhao, who was a member of the communist party’s central committee, was perceived to be seeking a position on the Central Military Commission that would have allowed him to serve until age 72.
Gen Zhao, who took over the Western Theater Command in 2016, was already on an extended stint. He had reached the retirement age of 65 this summer, but President Xi had allowed him to continue in office.
New Delhi’s assessment is that Gen Zhao had the approval of the Xi-led Central Military Commission when PLA troops carried out the initial raid into the Finger area near Pangong Tso in late April and early May. But there was some unrest over the misfortune after the bloody clash in the Galwan Valley in June, the deadliest clash between soldiers from the two countries since 1975, in which 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers were killed.
Over the following weeks and months, initial tactical success was met with a harsh Indian response, including consolidating the heights on the southern shore of the saltwater lake, resulting in a strategic loss for China.
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Indian officials said there has been no confirmation whether General Zhao was still resisting possible instructions from communist party leaders to soften his position, disengage and de-escalate. But there have been gaps, an official said, along the line taken by China during diplomatic talks and military negotiations.
Born in the coastal province of Liaoning, Gen Zhang is a Han and has served in the former Shenyang Military Region in northeast China. He was Chief of Staff of the 39th Army of the PLA. From March 2017 to January 2018, Zhang was the deputy commander of the Central Theater Command (CTC), which is responsible for the security of the Chinese capital, Beijing.
At the military parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of China’s founding in 2109, Zhang acted as deputy commander of the Joint Military Parade, which was widely appreciated within the central military commission.
Zhang, who has been transferred to Chengdu as commander of the western theater, is not a member of the central committee or the National People’s Congress. It has no ‘political’ exposures unlike its predecessor and has no known political ambitions.
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