(TibetanReview.net, Sep22’26) – After being put under investigation in January and removed from the state Central Military Commission (CMC) in late August, China has now expelled two top military leaders Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli from the Communist Party and the military. An official announcement of this was made on Sep 21, citing alleged disloyalty, corruption and other serious disciplinary breaches, reported Reuters Sep 21.
Zhang was second-in-command under President Xi Jinping as vice-chairman of the CMC – the supreme command body. While Reuters said he has long been seen as Xi’s closest military ally, other observers have seen him as undermining the top military and Party leader’s authority. Liu was a CMC member and the chief of staff of its Joint Staff Department.
Since coming to power in 2012, Xi unleashed one of the most sweeping corruption and discipline crackdowns in modern Chinese history. Millions within China’s vast bureaucracy have been investigated to varying degrees, with scores of senior party, government and military officials ensnared and purged.
But in recent years, the military has been one of the main targets. A string of investigations and expulsions have left just two active figures on the formerly seven-member CMC, including Xi himself, who serves as chair, the report noted.
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The Chinese leadership has accused the disgraced leaders of being being disloyal to the party, forsaking the party’s principles, failing to enforce strict party discipline or to supervise staff and family members.
They “seriously violated political discipline and political rules, formed cliques and factions, and were disloyal and dishonest to the party,” state-run Xinhua news agency has cited official documents as saying.
The pair “crossed red lines and basic limits,” and their “political and economic wrongdoings were intertwined, and corrupt self-enrichment coexisted with dereliction of duty and abuse of office.”
“The sums involved were exceptionally large; the nature (of their conduct) was extremely serious and the impact extremely egregious,” it was further quoted as saying.
Dennis Wilder, a former CIA China analyst and a senior fellow at Georgetown University, has noted that while corruption allegations are not unusual against senior PLA officers, “what is unprecedented is the charges of disloyalty that include forming cliques and factions.”
“It sends a sharp message to both the elders and the military about challenging Xi,” he has added.
“What’s most remarkable about this particular moment is that in the 1980s Zhang Youxia was presented by the party and military propaganda apparatus as proof that yet another generation of young Chinese would prove loyal to the revolution,” Joseph Torigian, an expert in Chinese politics at American University, has said.
“And now, Zhang is facing accusations of corruption and materialism that have brought down so many others of his cohort.”
The expulsions of Zhang and Liu were stated to have been formally approved during a Politburo meeting chaired by Xi on Sep 21. Their suspected criminal cases would now be handed over to military prosecutors for examination and prosecution, in accordance with the law, Xinhua has said.
The announcement came as Xi prepares to travel to the US on Sep 24 for talks with US President Donald Trump, and weeks before a key October party conclave on internal party governance and discipline.