It seems that when push comes to shove right now its the young people who are simply removing people who don't kowtow.

Of course it is easy to imagine that the people they are removing are those who made principled stands rather than the corrupt who keep their heads down. As in they are removing the people who thought their job was to serve the public rather than line their own pockets?

It is not clear if that is the effect the chiefs want or not.

Makes sense, I also imagine the incentives were different. These young grads had no incentive to lie while local gov officials had plenty.

The only one would be for the grads to take bribes from the local gov officials, but if the central government sent enough grads it would be too many to bribe.