China has expelled two of its most senior military officers from the Communist Party, including a man long regarded as President Xi Jinping’s closest ally inside the armed forces, in one of the most significant shake-ups of the People’s Liberation Army command in years.
State news agency Xinhua announced on Monday that General Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and General Liu Zhenli, a commission member and chief of staff of the Joint Staff Department, had been stripped of their party membership. Officials accused both men of having “seriously violated political discipline and political rules, formed cliques and factions, and were disloyal and dishonest to the party.”
Corruption and dereliction of duty
According to details relayed by state media and reported by Al Jazeera and the Associated Press, the charges against the two generals combined political disloyalty with financial wrongdoing, described as involving sums that were “exceptionally large” and conduct of an “extremely serious” nature. Their cases have been handed to military prosecutors for further investigation, though the expulsions still require formal ratification at a Communist Party Central Committee plenum expected next month.
Zhang’s fall is especially striking. As the second-ranking figure on the Central Military Commission behind only Xi himself, he was widely seen as one of the president’s most trusted lieutenants, a status that made his sudden removal a surprise even to longtime China watchers. Both men had reportedly been under investigation since January, with their removal from active military duties quietly confirmed in late August before Monday’s public expulsion.
Part of a years-long campaign
The move extends an anti-corruption drive inside the PLA that Xi has pursued since taking power, and which he has previously called one of the biggest threats facing the party. Recent years have seen a string of senior officers fall, including former defense minister Li Shangfu and his predecessor Wei Fenghe, both ousted in 2024, and a further purge of the military’s number two general along with eight other senior officials in October 2025.
With Zhang and Liu now gone, the seven-member Central Military Commission has been reduced to just two active members, Xi and one other officer, according to reporting from ABC News Australia. That leaves the body that oversees China’s roughly two million active-duty troops unusually thin at the top, even as Beijing continues to modernize its navy, air force and nuclear arsenal.
Timing raises questions
The announcement lands just weeks before Xi is due to meet President Donald Trump and ahead of an October party plenum focused on internal governance and discipline. Analysts quoted in Western coverage of the purge have suggested the timing may be intended to project an image of a disciplined, corruption-free military establishment heading into that diplomatic moment, though Beijing has offered no public explanation for the sequencing.
The scale of the turnover also raises harder questions about oversight inside the PLA’s procurement and promotion pipelines, since many of the officials purged in recent years, including Zhang and Liu, were themselves responsible for vetting the loyalty and conduct of those beneath them.
Why it matters beyond China
The reshuffle carries weight well beyond Beijing’s internal politics. China remains Pakistan’s largest source of military hardware, supplying fighter aircraft, naval frigates and missile systems under long-running defense agreements, while security cooperation tied to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor depends on stable, predictable counterparts on the Chinese side. A leadership vacuum at the top of the Central Military Commission, even a temporary one, can complicate the continuity of joint programs and high-level defense dialogue that Islamabad has come to rely on.
More broadly, the purge signals that Xi is willing to remove even his closest allies when he judges party discipline to be at stake, a pattern that has repeatedly unsettled assumptions about who holds real influence in Beijing. For governments and militaries that deal with China, from South Asia to the Pacific, the episode is a reminder that personnel stability at the top of the PLA cannot be taken for granted, even among officers once considered untouchable.
Whether the plenum next month confirms both expulsions as expected, or produces further names, is likely to shape how the outside world reads the health of China’s military establishment for months to come.
