The Chinese Communist Party has placed two senior generals under criminal investigation, including the most powerful officer of the People’s Liberation Army, the Defense Ministry announced Saturday.
Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission, and CMC Gen. Liu Zhenli, chief of staff of the PLA joint staff department, face probes for “serious discipline and law violations,” according to a ministry statement.
The CCP Central Committee, the party’s highest governing body, ordered the investigation, the ministry said in a statement.
Details of the alleged crimes were not disclosed.
However, CCP investigations such as those conducted for the two generals are normally the first step in the complete removal from power.
The commission is chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping and is the organization that controls the PLA while making decisions on going to war.
Gen. Zhang is regarded as the senior-most CMC vice chairman, and the investigation is the latest stunning disclosure of continuing high-level PLA removals.
The general was reportedly a confidant and loyalist of Mr. Xi.
The other vice chairman, Gen. Zhang Shengmin, was appointed to the post in October and had replaced Gen. He Weidong.
Gen. He was purged last year and expelled from the party, also for alleged serious violations of discipline and law related to what authorities said were large sums of money and political disloyalty.
“This move is unprecedented in the history of the Chinese military and represents the total annihilation of the high command,” former CIA analyst Christopher K. Johnson told The New York Times regarding the downfall of Gen. Zhang.
The latest action reduces the CMC to two members — Mr. Xi and Gen. Zhang Shengmin after the removal of all but one of the six PLA leaders on the panel appointed in 2022.
Since that year, Mr. Xi has purged about 120 military officers for alleged corruption or as part of a plan to bolster the senior ranks of the PLA.
The Pentagon’s annual report on the Chinese military, made public last month, said the CMC faced “turbulent changes affecting its senior leadership, primarily due to ongoing rampant corruption afflicting the PLA.”
A defense minister and CMC member, Gen. Li Shangfu, was removed in October 2023 due to corruption linked to arms procurement, the report said.
Another significant ouster took place in November 2024 when CMC Political Work Department Director Adm. Miao Hua was purged. He was in charge of enforcing communist ideology in the military.
“The ongoing anticorruption campaign could have short-term effects on readiness while potentially setting the stage for long-term PLA improvements overall,” the Pentagon report said.
Retired Navy Capt. Carl O. Schuster, a veteran China watcher, said Gen. Zhang’s removal is the latest move by Mr. Xi to quash factionalism within the PLA.
“Many observers believe Xi’s removal of Gen. He Weidong marked the ascendance of Zhang’s Shaanxi faction in PLA leadership promotions,” he said. “Zhang’s removal suggests Xi sees regional favoritism as a threat both to his own power and PLA unity.”
Manoj Kewalramani, a China expert at Takshashila Institution, a think tank in India, said the purge of Gen. Zhang Youxia is a bombshell. He added that reports from Asia suggest the action followed the general’s failure to rein in close associates, family members and relatives, as well as for shortcomings in identifying and flagging problems in CCP leadership at an early stage.
“One line of assessment links this to corruption tied to capability-building, arguing that the purge reflects performance failures as the PLA moves toward its centenary in 2027,” Mr. Kewalramani stated in a post on Substack. “In this view, Zhang’s leadership did not deliver the results demanded.”
After the purge of Gen. He and Adm. Mio that undermined their factional networks within the military, Gen. Zhang Shengmin may have emerged as the only remaining dominant power center, he said.
“From Xi’s standpoint, a single entrenched faction, even one led by a long-time ally, would be unacceptable if it created a potential counterweight to his authority,” Mr. Kewalramani said.
The ousted Gen. Zhang Youxia is one of the PLA commanders with combat experience as an officer during a border conflict with Vietnam in 1979.
Lack of warfighting experience, a key American military advantage, is viewed as a major weakness of the PLA, which has been engaged in a large-scale military buildup the past two decades.
The general also was close to Mr. Xi based on both of their fathers joining Mao Zedong’s revolutionary wars.
Mr. Xi’s purge also extended outside the PLA.
Gao Yichen, former vice minister of the Ministry of State Security, the political police and intelligence service, was expelled from the CCP for corruption, the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced Tuesday.
An investigation of the former senior intelligence official found that Mr. Gao “lost his ideals and convictions”, “lacked political awareness and political discernment” and engaged in “extensive collusion” with the business sector, “severely contaminating the political environment,” the party watchdog office said in a statement.
Mr. Gao, who was placed under investigation in June, was purged for “continuing to wantonly amass wealth after retirement,” the statement said.
