抽大梁

chōudàliáng ㄔㄡ ㄉㄚˋ ㄌㄧㄤˊ

    • to remove the key people of a group
    • to take away the backbone of something

Character by character

Saying俗语俗語

Idiom惯用语 · Rarely used now

Literally
pull out the main beam
Meaning
To remove the key people or backbone of a group. Critical.

Sources