{"id":253019,"date":"2026-01-26T20:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T20:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/253019\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T20:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T20:58:07","slug":"fate-of-chinas-top-general-more-likely-to-do-with-power-struggle-than-corruption-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/253019\/","title":{"rendered":"Fate of China\u2019s top general more likely to do with power struggle than corruption | China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Standing inches from Xi Jinping<\/a> at a military ceremony in late December, China\u2019s highest-ranking general, Zhang Youxia, may have had little inkling about the fate that was to befall him just a few weeks later when he was put under investigation.<\/p>\n

The 75-year-old\u2019s physical proximity to China\u2019s leader, who stands to his right, reflects the position he holds in China\u2019s hierarchy. As vice-chair of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the ruling body of the People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA), he is the second-most powerful person in China\u2019s military, after Xi, the commander-in-chief.<\/p>\n

But on Saturday, China\u2019s defence ministry announced<\/a> that Zhang and Liu Zhenli, another CMC member, were under investigation for \u201csuspected serious violations of discipline and law\u201d, party-speak for corruption.<\/p>\n

Zhang and Liu have not been formally removed from the party or the commission, but being placed under investigation is all but certain to lead to those outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is easily the most significant PLA purge in the post-Mao era,\u201d said Neil Thomas, a fellow on Chinese politics at the Asia Society thinktank. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to overstate how rare this is \u2026 it would be like arresting the chair of the US joint chiefs of staff for corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zhang Youxia at a naval symposium in Qingdao in April 2024. Photograph: Florence Lo\/Reuters<\/p>\n

A Sunday editorial in the PLA\u2019s official newspaper laid out the charges against Zhang and Liu. The men allegedly \u201cseriously betrayed the trust and expectations\u201d of the party and the CMC and \u201cfostered political and corruption problems that undermined the party\u2019s absolute leadership over the military\u201d.<\/p>\n

Precise details of the allegations have not been revealed, but the editorial suggests that political problems were a factor as well as corruption.<\/p>\n

Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, said Zhang\u2019s recent appearance alongside Xi and his nomination to the CMC at the 20th party congress in 2022, when he was past the normal retirement age, indicated that he was a trusted figure until relatively recently. \u201cCorruption does not just happen overnight,\u201d Wu said.<\/p>\n

Zhang is the most senior in a string of top PLA officials<\/a> who have been defenestrated in recent years, including Li Shangfu<\/a>, the former defence minister, who was kicked off the CMC in 2023 and expelled from the party in 2024. The Wall Street Journal reported that Zhang\u2019s downfall was linked to the fact that he had promoted Li.<\/p>\n

Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University and a former senior CIA analyst, said a power struggle was a more likely explanation than corruption. The purge \u201cisn\u2019t about corruption, it isn\u2019t about leaking secrets, it is about a general that became too powerful\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

graphic depicting the leadership of the CMC<\/a><\/p>\n

Whatever the reason for Zhang\u2019s fall from grace, one thing is certain: Xi wants him gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that Xi is purging his right-hand man in the military is a shocking development, which suggests Zhang was guilty of a significant betrayal of Xi\u2019s trust,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n

Zhang was once considered to be one of Xi\u2019s closest military allies. He is a fellow Communist party \u201cprinceling\u201d, the son of revolutionaries who served under Mao Zedong. He is one of the few generals to have seen active combat as a frontline officer during China\u2019s conflict with Vietnam in 1978.<\/p>\n

These credentials, and the fact Xi handpicked him to serve on the CMC, might have suggested a degree of political protection.<\/p>\n

But Xi seems determined to prove otherwise. \u201cFor Xi, there\u2019s nothing more important than strengthening party discipline and ensuring it does not go the same way as the Soviet Communist party, which in his view was rendered ineffective by corruption,\u201d said Thomas. \u201cNo one is safe in Beijing because Xi puts the party above any individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

The party\u2019s control of the armed forces is central to its, and therefore Xi\u2019s, grip on power. That means that Xi is willing to assert his authority at all costs, even if the result is a somewhat absurd CMC lineup effectively down to two people: Xi himself and the CMC\u2019s anti-corruption chief, Zhang Shengmin.<\/p>\n

Zhang Shengmin at the opening session of the National People\u2019s Congress (NPC) in Beijing in March 2025. Photograph: Florence Lo\/Reuters<\/p>\n

For western analysts, the biggest question is what it means for China\u2019s military buildup, and particularly its readiness to launch an assault on Taiwan. US intelligence believes Xi has ordered the military to be ready to win a fight for it by 2027, making this a crucial year for modernisation. Unification with the self-governing island which Beijing claims as its territory is one of Xi\u2019s main priorities and he has not ruled out the use of force to achieve it.<\/p>\n

Some argue that the purges make an attack on Taiwan less likely, at least in the short term, because the army does not have the high level decision-making capacity to launch a sophisticated operation. \u201cIt gives the US military more time to prepare for a Taiwan conflict,\u201d said Wilder.<\/p>\n

Others caution that the ousted men could be replaced by a younger, more aggressive lineup of officers who are unlikely to question their leader.<\/p>\n

Lyle Goldstein, the director of the Asia programme at Defense Priorities, a US foreign policy thinktank, noted that China had unveiled a suite of powerful new weapons at its military parade in September, a sabre-rattling display of bravado.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it would be a major mistake to assume that the Chinese military lacks capable senior officers or that it is less likely to move against Taiwan due to this recent shake-up of the CMC,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One aspect widely agreed on is that the investigations will not end with Zhang and Liu. Scholars of the Chinese Communist party describe corruption as a feature of the system, not a bug. Zhang and Liu are likely to be interrogated about whatever offences they are specifically accused of, which will throw up more names. \u201cMore arrests are likely,\u201d Wu said.<\/p>\n

Additional research by Lillian Yang<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Standing inches from Xi Jinping at a military ceremony in late December, China\u2019s highest-ranking general, Zhang Youxia, may…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-253019","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\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}