The two men had held some of the highest posts in China’s military. On Monday, 21 September 2026, Xinhua announced they were out of the Communist Party and out of the army.
Zhang Youxia was a member of the Politburo and a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. Liu Zhenli sat on the commission and served as chief of its Joint Staff Department. A Politburo meeting approved the commission’s reports on both cases, Xinhua said, after the military’s own disciplinary and supervisory body investigated them. Their cases will go to military prosecutors.
What the Party says they did
The statement released after the meeting accuses Zhang and Liu of forming self-serving cliques, of being disloyal and dishonest to the Party, and of using their posts to help others win promotions in return for a huge sum of bribes. It also says they failed in their duty to keep the Party’s house in order. The amounts involved were “exceptionally large,” it said, and the violations were of an extremely serious nature. Xinhua notes the military expulsion had already been decided, while the Party expulsion still awaits confirmation when the Central Committee holds a plenary session.
These are the Party’s own findings. No evidence has been published, and neither man has been heard from.
The official PLA Daily went further in an editorial the following Wednesday. It said the two had “seriously contributed to political and corruption problems” that threatened the Party’s absolute leadership over the military, and had done enormous damage to its combat effectiveness.
Xi’s closest military ally
Reuters, in a report published on 24 September, called the move the latest step in a long crackdown. Zhang is the son of a close friend of President Xi Jinping’s father and had long been seen as Xi’s closest military ally and deputy on the commission. Investigations into Zhang and Liu were first made public in January, Reuters said.
Zhang was also the most senior officer with real combat experience, from the brief and bloody border war with Vietnam in 1979, the last time China fought in earnest. In 2024 he met then US national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Beijing, a meeting seen at the time as a breakthrough in military ties. It is unclear who will take his place.
Readiness and control
Diplomats and analysts told Reuters that the purges may have dented China’s war-fighting readiness, but are likely to have strengthened Xi’s grip. Dozens of second-line officers have filled key posts, yet five places on the commission’s ruling seven-person committee are vacant. The defense ministry did not immediately answer a request for comment.
James Char, a security scholar in Singapore, said the removal of proteges of Zhang and of Miao Hua, formerly the military’s top uniformed political officer, had helped Xi further. “Whoever controls the People’s Liberation Army controls the party,” Char said. He does not expect the top panel to be filled before the Party congress in late 2027.
Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser on China at the Tony Blair Institute in London, said it is “hard to imagine upheaval on this scale wouldn’t create issues for more complex operations,” including a full-scale Taiwan contingency, though she noted routine operations had been shielded. “Xi clearly sees short-term disruption as a price worth paying for long-term discipline and combat readiness,” she added.
Tian Shichen, president of the Chinese think tank Global Governance Institution, gave the official view: removing corrupt elements strengthens the military’s political foundation, cohesion and combat effectiveness. Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund pointed out that the PLA can still carry out orders through the joint staff, theatre commands, services and Party apparatus.
Sources
- Zhang Youxia, Liu Zhenli expelled from CPC, military for serious discipline, law violations-Xinhua
- Purges of top PLA brass spur questions about fighting ability (Reuters via Asahi Shimbun)
