The rise and fall of Gen. Zhang YouxiaPremium

Explore the dramatic rise and fall of Gen. Zhang Youxia, China's top military officer, amid a widening anti-corruption crackdown.

Gen. Zhang Youxia is one of China’s few top military officers with combat experience. He joined the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2007, and in 2012, he was appointed to the Central Military Commission (CMC), the country’s highest military decision-making body. In 2017, he entered the Politburo, the 24-member body that oversees both the party and the central government, and was elevated to the second-ranked Vice Chairman of the CMC. In 2022, as President Xi Jinping began a third term following a constitutional amendment, Gen. Zhang retained his position on the CMC and was promoted to first-ranked Vice Chairman, the country’s highest-ranking military officer. Even as several senior military officers were removed in recent years amid a widening “anti-corruption” crackdown, Gen. Zhang, widely seen as having close ties to Mr. Xi, seemed unaffected.

On January 24, China’s Ministry of National Defence stunned observers when it announced that Gen. Zhang and Liu Zhenli, another member of the CMC and Chief of Staff of the CMC Joint Staff Department, were under investigation “for suspected serious discipline and law violations”. The decision to place them “under investigation was made by the CPC Central Committee,” stated the Ministry in a statement.

An editorial in the PLA Daily, the official mouthpiece of the People’s Liberation Army, declared that “in the fight against corruption, no place is out of bounds, no ground is left unturned, and no tolerance is allowed”. Zhang and Liu, according to the editorial, “have gravely betrayed the trust placed in them by the CPC Central Committee and the CMC, and seriously trampled on and undermined the system of ultimate responsibility resting with the CMC chairman [Xi Jinping]”. It added: “They have severely fuelled political and corruption problems that threaten the Party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces and undermine the Party’s governance foundation.”

Zhang Youxia, born in 1950 in Weinan City, Shaanxi Province, is a princeling like Xi Jinping — the descendents of China’s founding revolutionaries. His father Zhang Zongxun fought alongside Mr. Xi’s father Xi Zhongxun during China’s civil war. Mr. Zhang joined the PLA in 1968 and gained rare combat experience during the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war. He became a Major General in 1997 and the commander of the PLA’s Shenyang Military Region, which shares a border with North Korea and Russia, in 2007. In the same year, he was appointed to the Central Committee of the party when Hu Jintao was the President. In 2011, he became a General. A year later, Gen. Zhang was appointed the head of the PLA General Armaments Department, a position that placed him at the centre of China’s military modernisation drive, initiated by the new leader, Xi Jinping.

Mr. Xi launched a sweeping anti-corruption drive aimed at rooting out corruption and favouritism within the PLA’s top ranks. He also overhauled the military’s command structure, centralising control and authority in his own hands. Several senior officers have fallen to the crackdown, particularly after Mr. Xi assumed his third term. Those sacked since 2022 include Li Yuchao, the commander of China’s Rocket Force, and his deputy Liu Guangbin and former deputy Zhang Zhenzhong.

When the current CMC began its term in 2022, it comprised seven members: Xi Jinping (Chairman); Zhang Youxia (Vice Chairman); He Weidong (Vice Chairman); Li Shangfu (Defence Minister); Liu Zhenli (Chief of the Joint Staff Department); Miao Hua (Director of the Political Work Department); and Zhang Shengmin (Secretary of the Military’s discipline commission). Of these, only two have remained in their positions unaffected by the anti-corruption drive—President Xi himself and Zhang Shengmin, the discipline czar who was promoted to the rank of Vice Chairman in October 2025.