the expulsion of nine top generals in October<\/a> – one of the largest public crackdowns on the military in decades. <\/p>\nZhang, 75, is a vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) – the Communist Party group headed by President Xi which controls the armed forces.<\/p>\n
Zhang also sits on the party’s top decision-making body, the 24-person Politburo.<\/p>\n
His father was one of the founding generals of the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n
Zhang joined the army in 1968 and is one of only a few senior leaders with combat experience. <\/p>\n
He was kept in office beyond the customary retirement age for China’s military, suggesting President Xi’s confidence in him until now.<\/p>\n
The announcement comes days after rumours appeared that Zhang and Liu could be facing an investigation as they were not present at a high-level party event in December.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768392369_261_grey-placeholder.png\")
![\"Reuters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/00449650-f920-11f0-b5f7-49f0357294ff.jpg.webp.webp\")
Reuters<\/p>\n
President Xi has been accused of using corruption investigations to purge political rivals<\/p>\n
Since coming to power, President Xi has launched waves of anti-corruption drives through various departments and this campaign has recently focused heavily on the military.<\/p>\n
He has called corruption “the biggest threat” to the Communist Party and said the fight against it “remains grave and complex”.<\/p>\n
Advocates say the policy promotes good governance, but others believe it has been used as a tool to purge political rivals.<\/p>\n
With the probe into Zhang and Liu, the CMC is now down from the original seven members to just two: Xi, who is the chairman, and Zhang Shengmin, who is responsible for the military’s disciplinary affairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reuters Zhang Youxia was widely seen as President Xi’s closest military ally China’s defence ministry says it has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-430672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Reuters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/c9bfcd40-f922-11f0-8e3c-b79a1b327384.jpg.webp.webp\")
Reuters<\/p>\n