China’s top general under investigation in latest military purge : NPR

FILE – General Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, attends the opening session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Ng Han Guan/AP/AP

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Ng Han Guan/AP/AP

BEIJING — China’s top military general is under investigation for alleged serious violations of discipline and law, the Defense Ministry said Saturday:

Zhang Youxia, the senior of two vice chairmen of the powerful Central Military Commission, is the latest figure to fall into a long purge of military officials.

Analysts say the purges are aimed both at reforming the military and ensuring loyalty to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who also chairs the military commission. They are part of a broader anti-corruption campaign that has punished more than 200,000 officials since Xi came to power in 2012.

Another commission member, Liu Zhenli, was also the subject of an investigation by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, according to a Defense Ministry statement. Liu is the chief of staff of the commission’s Joint Staff Department. The commission is China’s highest military body.

The statement provides no details about the alleged wrongdoing.

Zhang, 75, joined the People’s Liberation Army in 1968 and is a general in the ground forces.

The Communist Party expelled the commission’s other vice chairman, He Weidong, last October and replaced him with commission member Zhang Shengmin.

In 2024, the party expelled two former defense ministers for corruption.

The Trump administration released a new national defense strategy Friday recognizing China as a military power that it says must be deterred from dominating the United States or its allies.

“This does not require regime change or another existential struggle,” the strategy says. “On the contrary, a decent peace, on terms favorable to the Americans but which China can also accept and live with, is possible.”