China watchers are trying to spot the next target of Xi’s purges

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Beijing’s recent announcement of an investigation into its top general was a bombshell with a mystery at its heart: What pushed Chinese leader Xi Jinping to purge a friend he had entrusted to overhaul the military? Official newspaper editorials have condemned Gen. Zhang Youxia for allegedly undermining Xi’s authority, abetting corruption and damaging efforts to develop China’s combat effectiveness.

Some analysts wondered if the two men had disagreed over policy, while others theorized that Xi wanted to eliminate a perceived threat. Some sleuths have resorted to studying body language as they try to pierce the veil of secrecy. They pointed to footage showing Zhang facing away from Xi as the leader walked past after a legislative session last year, to speculate about souring ties between the men.

Xi’s motives for ejecting Zhang may never be definitively known. But that hasn’t stopped foreign academics, officials and business executives from trying to find out—and some are turning to arcane tea leaf-reading techniques dating back to the era of Mao Zedong. “Pekingology," as this Chinese analog of Kremlinology is known, often involves poring over official speeches, documents and state-media coverage in a bid to divine insights from language, behavior and deviations from the norm.

The party was already highly secretive before Xi took power in 2012, but his tilt toward autocratic rule has made Chinese politics even more opaque and sparked a resurgence in Pekingology. Some have waded through turgid Communist Party documents in search of subtle shifts in tone and vocabulary. Others have tracked attendance at political gatherings, parsing changes in seating arrangements or unexplained absences