Zhang Youxia spent the better part of a decade near the top of China’s military. In January 2026 he was detained, and by autumn the Communist Party had thrown him out. The Politburo expelled him in September, and the Central Committee confirmed the decision in October.
His fall is the most serious blow to the military leadership since the Lin Biao incident in 1971. The defense ministry announced on January 24 that Zhang and Liu Zhenli, chief of the Joint Staff Department, were under investigation for suspected “serious violations of discipline.” Zhang had vanished from public view after November 2025, when he last travelled to Russia and met Defense Minister Andrey Belousov. The South China Morning Post reported that he was arrested on January 19, and that senior party officials were briefed on his case on January 23.
A long career, and a war record
Zhang was born in Beijing in the early 1950s and is the son of General Zhang Zongxun, which made him a “princeling.” His father and Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, both came from the Weinan area of Shaanxi and served together in the First Field Army.
He joined the army in December 1968, fought in the 1979 war with Vietnam and led troops at the Battle of Laoshan in 1984. That made him one of the few serving generals with combat experience. Promotions followed: commander of the 13th Group Army in 2000, commander of the Shenyang Military Region in 2007, full general in 2011. He ran the General Armaments Department, and then its successor, the Equipment Development Department, which put him in charge of China’s human spaceflight programme. In 2017 he joined the Politburo as second-ranking vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. He became first-ranking vice chairman in 2022, staying on past the party’s informal retirement age of 68.
His public statements were hawkish. In 2023 he told the Xiangshan Forum that the army would “show no mercy” toward moves for Taiwan independence. In 2024 he told US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that Washington should “correct its strategic understanding of China.”
What he is accused of
The charges depend on who is telling it. The South China Morning Post said Zhang was suspected of corruption and of failing to rein in associates and relatives. The People’s Liberation Army Daily accused him and Liu of having “severely trampled on and undermined the CMC Chairman responsibility system,” which was a harsher charge than the one laid against He Weidong, the former vice chairman.
The Wall Street Journal reported on January 25 that Zhang was accused of forming political cliques, taking large bribes to promote Li Shangfu as defense minister, and leaking core nuclear weapons data to the United States. The New York Times, citing unnamed current and former US officials, reported that Zhang was not a US spy and had not leaked nuclear secrets.
K. Tristan Tang, writing for the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief, doubted the corruption case. He argued that the charges grew out of a political dispute. In his reading, Zhang and Liu resisted Xi’s demand that the army be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, preferring a steadier training reform aimed at 2035.
Of the six generals Xi appointed to the Central Military Commission in 2022, only Zhang Shengmin has not been removed.
