In a highly unusual public admonishment, China announced criminal allegations against two former high-ranking defense officials Thursday.

First is Wei Fenghe, China’s defense minister between 2018 and 2023. Wei is a former head of the People’s Liberation Army‘s Rocket Force, which is China’s land-based conventional and nuclear missile command, and a member of the powerful Central Military Commission. Second is Li Shangfu, Wei’s direct successor as defense minister, another CMC member, and the inaugural head of the PLA’s Strategic Support Force, a now-defunct space, cyberspace, and information warfare command.

Both officials were extremely high-ranking members of the Communist Party, holding positions evidencing Xi’s trust in them to effect his wishes with efficiency and energy.

Not so today. Xi now leaves little doubt that, as Shakespeare might say, his trust is now suppressed and killed. Both the Xinhua and PLA official news websites reported the expulsion of both officials from the party, the removal of their ranks, and the criminal accusations against them.

Wei and Li are said to have “seriously violated organizational discipline and violated regulations to seek personnel benefits for others … accepted gifts in violation of regulations … received huge sums of money, suspected of accepting bribes.” Readers are told that “Their actions failed the trust of the Party Central Committee and the Central Military Commission, severely polluted the political ecology of the troops … the nature [of the offenses] was extremely serious, the impact was extremely bad, and the harm was particularly great.”

This is very rare stuff from a regime that much prefers concealing scandal with abundant secrecy (cough, cough). Still, the intent of this public defenestration seems clear. Xi wants to show the PLA’s senior leadership and lower ranks on down that he will now move aggressively against inklings of corruption or disloyalty. While a wider purge of the PLA has been underway for more than a year now, any PLA officers or bureaucrats reading these reports will think, “If it can happen to Wei and Li, it can happen to me. I better keep the party line.”

Again, however, these announcements are striking. They are tantamount to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his immediate predecessor, Mark Esper, both being simultaneously indicted by the Justice Department for corruption jeopardizing national security. But in the Chinese Communist Party system, which so values absolute loyalty to Xi and the party, these declarations are far more serious.

In essence, Xi is admitting a rot at the heart of his court. Plainly concerned that the rot remains in place in certain high positions, he has evidently decided that the public embarrassment of these announcements is a necessary price to pay for the better deterrence of future corruption or disloyalty.

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There is a more ominous lesson here. The Chinese economy is in significant difficulty, and Xi has great political-economic incentive to focus on addressing that matter as his defining concern. Keeping the perception of a smooth hand at the helm might do him well in that regard. But these announcements show anything but, and Xi will know that they will gain significant international intention. That Xi is still so determined to purge the PLA suggests that he has plans for the PLA that demand his greater confidence in its competencies today rather than tomorrow.

Might those plans involve an island democracy 85 miles off China’s coast?