China Strips Top Generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli From Military Commission, Leaving Just Two Members Beside Xi

China's Central Military Commission just lost its two highest-ranking uniformed officers.

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress announced on August 28 that Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli have been removed from the state Central Military Commission, according to Xinhua, the Communist Party's official news agency. Both men were placed under investigation in January for what China's defense ministry called "grave violations of discipline and the law," language Beijing typically uses for corruption or disloyalty charges, as reported by The Epoch Times.

Zhang, 76, was the second-highest-ranking officer in China's military, serving as senior vice-chairman of the CMC since 2018 and sitting on the Communist Party's Politburo. He was widely seen as one of Xi Jinping's closest military allies, with roots going back generations: his father, Zhang Zongxun, served as a revolutionary-era general alongside Xi's own father, Xi Zhongxun, according to The Arabian Post. Liu, an army general, had run the CMC's Joint Staff Department since 2022, overseeing operational planning and combat readiness across the armed forces.

From Six Members to One, Plus Xi

The commission that began Xi's third term in 2022 had seven members. It's now down to two: Xi himself and General Zhang Shengmin, the military's top disciplinary official, who was elevated to vice-chairman only last year, according to The Print. Every other officer Xi appointed to the CMC in 2022 has since vanished from public view.

Beyond Zhang and Liu, the NPC on August 28 also revoked the legislative membership of Ju Qiansheng, commander of the PLA Strategic Support Force, and Zhong Shaojun, a longtime Xi aide who followed him from Zhejiang and Shanghai into Beijing's central leadership, per Xinhua's statement carried by both The Straits Times and The Epoch Times. Separately, China's top political advisory body stripped Zhao Zongqi, the former Western Theater Command chief during the deadly 2020 border clashes with India, of his membership on August 26, according to Reuters reporting picked up by The Straits Times.

Stripping legislative or advisory-body membership matters beyond optics. Those posts carried legal immunity from arrest and prosecution. Removing Zhang and Liu from the NPC opens the door to formal criminal charges, a step China's system rarely skips once officials reach this stage.

Two Structures, One Real Boss

China runs parallel military commissions, one under the state constitution and one under the Communist Party, with identical personnel. The August 28 action only formally removes Zhang and Liu from the state CMC. Neither has been publicly stripped of his Party CMC seat, though in practice the Party body holds the actual power, as both The Straits Times and The Epoch Times note. That distinction is a paperwork gap, not evidence the two men survive politically.

The Scale of the Purge

This isn't an isolated incident. A February report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated more than 100 senior PLA commanders have been purged since 2022, cited by The Epoch Times. The Print reports China opened more than one million formal corruption investigations in 2025 alone, nearly seven times the number recorded when Xi took power in 2012, and that the Party expelled nine top generals that year in one of the largest public military crackdowns in decades.

Xi has repeatedly tied the campaign to loyalty, not just graft. Addressing military delegates at the March NPC session, he said the armed forces could provide "neither shelter for corruption nor room for officials disloyal to the party," according to The Arabian Post.

What's Proven, What's Speculation

What's confirmed: both officers were investigated starting January 24 for discipline and law violations, both have now lost their formal commission seats and legislative immunity, and the commission's roster has shrunk to its smallest size under Xi. What's not confirmed: any specific charge, conviction, or public explanation for why these two men, both rare combat veterans of China's border conflicts with Vietnam, were targeted.

The Epoch Times reported, citing unnamed "China insiders," that Beijing has already decided to charge Zhang with corruption-related offenses to divert attention from an internal power struggle. Anonymous sources have not corroborated this claim through other outlets in this reporting.

Outside analysts have long debated whether Xi's military purges reflect genuine anti-corruption enforcement, a consolidation of personal control, or both simultaneously. Chinese state media frames every case exclusively in disciplinary terms and offers no public rationale for individual removals, which itself reflects how opaque the process remains. No independent tribunal or press reviews these cases, and the Party controls every stage from investigation to verdict.

What happens next is the open question. Will Beijing file formal charges against Zhang and Liu now that their immunity is gone, and will the Party's own Central Military Commission ever publicly confirm their ouster from its ranks? Neither has happened as of this reporting.