China Expels Top General Zhang Youxia From Party

The Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China on Monday approved the expulsion of Zhang Youxia, a Politburo member and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, a CMC member and former chief of the commission’s Joint Staff Department, over what Xinhua described as “serious disciplinary and legal violations.” Both men were also stripped of their military status, and their criminal cases were referred to the military procuratorate for prosecution — a step that, according to one former Pentagon official, makes a court-martial all but certain.

The decision, announced by the official Xinhua News Agency, culminates one of the largest political shocks in recent Chinese history and marks the most senior military purge of Xi Jinping’s tenure as the country’s top leader.

Context: A Purge Years in the Making

The expulsions did not come out of nowhere. The current wave of military investigations began with a scandal inside the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force in 2023 and has since expanded to the highest levels of the command structure. By early 2026, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies cited by The New York Times, more than 100 senior officers — including some already retired — had been investigated or had disappeared and were presumed detained.

Zhang and Liu were formally placed under investigation in late January 2026, a move the Times characterized as one of China’s biggest political shocks in years. In August, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee removed Zhang from his post as Vice Chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission and Liu from his seat on the PRC CMC, and recalled both as NPC deputies.

Zhang, 76, was a “princeling” — the son of a founding-era revolutionary general — and had been a close ally of Xi’s. Xi had promoted him to be the PLA’s top serving commander and allowed him to serve beyond the normal retirement age. That the party has now turned on him underscores how far Xi’s trust in the military leadership has eroded.

The Charges

According to the official announcement, investigators found that Zhang and Liu “betrayed their original aspirations, became estranged from the Party, lost their Party principles, and crossed red lines.” The charges spanned political, organizational, integrity, work, and life discipline.

On political discipline, the men were accused of “forming cliques and factions” (搞团团伙伙) and of being “disloyal and dishonest” to the Party. On organizational discipline, they were said to have used their positions to help others win promotions while accepting “enormous sums” of money. They were further accused of illegally accepting gifts and money, of failing to fulfill their responsibility for full and strict Party governance, and of failing to educate and manage their relatives and close staff.

The announcement described the offenses in uncompromising terms: “political and economic problems intertwined, corruption and dereliction of duty coexisting, amounts involved especially huge, extremely serious in nature, extremely vile in influence.” Both men were expelled from the Party — a decision to be formally ratified at the next full Central Committee plenum — and stripped of their status as delegates to the 20th Party Congress.

A Broken Alliance at the Top

James Char, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore who studies the Chinese military, told the Times that the wording of the charges pointed to an influence- cultivation scheme inside the armed forces.

“This clearly shows there was some kind of clique-building behind the scenes,” he said. “They tried to place their protégés in important positions to ensure a degree of influence even after retirement.”

The political framing matters. Zhang “almost certainly” would have retired at the next Party Congress in late 2027, suggesting that his removal was a forced purge rather than routine turnover. Drew Thompson, a former Pentagon official who helped host Zhang during a 2012 U.S. visit, told the Times that the expulsion “paves the way for a military trial, and they will undoubtedly receive heavy sentences.”

The official narrative struck a similarly pointed note on loyalty. “The serious handling of Zhang and Liu fully demonstrates the determination of the Party Central Committee and the CMC to carry the anti-corruption struggle through to the end,” Xinhua said, adding that “there can be no hiding place for corrupt elements in the military.”

The CMC, Hollowed Out

The practical effect of the purge is a leadership vacuum at the very top of the PLA. The CMC, the body through which the Party controls the military, had seven members in 2022, including Xi as chairman and Zhang as his top deputy. After this expulsion, only two remain: Xi and General Zhang Shengmin, who has overseen the ongoing investigation and purge effort. Dozens of command posts remain vacant in official records.

Xi has been slow to name replacements. Throughout 2026, officers have undergone ideological education aimed at reinforcing discipline and loyalty. The PLA Daily newspaper, the military’s flagship outlet, published a full-page commentary arguing that political loyalty and reliability will ultimately make the force more effective in battle — an apparent rejoinder to concerns that the turmoil has damaged readiness.

Many foreign experts take the opposite view, arguing that the removal of so many commanders and the resulting disruption have degraded the PLA’s operational readiness, including for any potential action concerning Taiwan. The question of whether a smaller, more politically vetted command structure is stronger or weaker is now one of the most consequential open debates about Chinese military power.

What’s Next

The expulsions are expected to be formally ratified at the 5th Plenum of the 20th Central Committee, which the Politburo has scheduled to run in Beijing from October 26 to 29, according to Caixin. Ratification by the full Central Committee is a procedural requirement for expelling a member.

Beyond that, several questions remain unresolved. Who Xi names — and how quickly — to fill the vacant command posts will signal how far he intends to remake the military’s leadership. Whether the purge stops at Zhang’s level or extends further down the chain of command is another open question.

For now, the message from Beijing is unambiguous: the anti-corruption campaign that has reshaped Chinese politics for more than a decade has not exempted the men at the top of the People’s Liberation Army. As the official announcement put it, there is to be no hiding place for corrupt elements in the military — however senior.