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.
