WTH Is Going on with the CCP Purge in China? John Garnaut Explains.
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kremlinology has made its way east as analysts try to make sense of dramatic PLA purges under Xi Jinping. The CCP regime appears to be clearing house, but what does it all mean? Should there be a reconsideration of a Taiwan contingency for China? Is China even equipped to make threats against its neighbors? At a moment of global turbulence, why reduce military expertise? What does it all mean for the United States? Is Xi going the way of Stalin? So many questions; join us for the answers.
John Garnaut is the founder of Garnaut Global, where he provides strategic advice and risk management services to global finance and corporate clients as an authority on Chinese elite politics and Chinese Communist Party interference. John was previously Fairfax's China correspondent and Asia-Pacific Editor, Senior Advisor to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and Principal Advisor at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, where he led the government's analysis and policy response to authoritarian interference. He regularly presents to departments and agencies in Australia and the United States and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.1 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. |
| 0:07.1 | Thanks for listening. Here's our show. |
| 0:08.7 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:10.5 | What's really going on? |
| 0:12.0 | We said, what the hell happened? |
| 0:13.5 | You don't have to know what the hell is on it. |
| 0:15.6 | They see what's going on. |
| 0:16.7 | I don't know what's going on. |
| 0:18.0 | What is going on? |
| 0:20.0 | We must find out what's going on. What is going on? We must find out what is going on. |
| 0:29.6 | Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. |
| 0:31.4 | And I'm Mark Tiesin. |
| 0:32.6 | Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:34.1 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:36.1 | Mark? |
| 0:36.6 | What the hell is going on is there? What the hell is going on? |
| 0:38.1 | Is there's a purge, a massive purge in Beijing. |
| 0:41.7 | Xi Jinping or Sieging Ping, as I discovered in this podcast as the proper pronunciation, |
| 0:46.4 | has absolutely just taken a hammer to a large majority of the leadership of the people's liberation army and the members |
| 0:57.8 | of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. And everybody in Washington is speculating |
| 1:04.1 | about what the hell is going on. And so we decided, we need to find out what the hell is going on. |
... |
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