Xi Expels Top General for Disloyalty, Gutting China's Military Command

The removal of Zhang Youxia, once Xi Jinping's closest military ally, leaves the Central Military Commission a near-empty shell and signals that the purge has moved from corruption into the far more dangerous territory of political loyalty.

Intelligence Lead

China has expelled Zhang Youxia, formerly the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the People's Liberation Army, and Liu Zhenli, chief of the Joint Staff Department, from both the Communist Party and the military on charges that include disloyalty and forming factions. The decision strips the Central Military Commission down to a reported two active members, one of them Xi Jinping himself. It lands days before Xi travels to Washington for talks with Donald Trump.

Situation Report

The expulsions were formally approved at a Politburo meeting chaired by Xi on Monday 21 September, according to Xinhua. Official documents accuse both men of seriously violating political discipline, forming cliques and factions, and being disloyal and dishonest toward the Party. They are also charged with trading on their positions to influence postings and promotions and with accepting what state media described as exceptionally large sums of money. Both cases are being handed to military prosecutors.

Zhang served as first vice-chairman of the CMC, the body that exercises supreme command over China's armed forces, and sat on the 24-member Politburo. He was one of very few senior officers with combat experience, having fought in the 1979 border war with Vietnam, and was long regarded as the general Xi trusted most. Liu, as Joint Staff chief, sat at the operational centre of the PLA's command structure.

Investigations into both men were first announced in January. They were removed from the state CMC in late August. Separately, reporting since early this year has attributed to Zhang the alleged leaking of data on China's nuclear weapons build-up to the United States. That allegation does not appear in the official charges released on Monday and remains unconfirmed.

Former CIA China analyst Dennis Wilder, now at Georgetown University, told Reuters the disloyalty charges were without precedent in the modern purge campaign and recalled the language of the Mao era.

Background & Context

Xi's anti-corruption drive has swept through the PLA with growing intensity since 2023, taking down two defence ministers, the leadership of the Rocket Force that controls China's land-based nuclear arsenal, and senior equipment procurement officials. Former CMC vice-chairman He Weidong was removed earlier in the cycle. The commission, which had seven members after the 2022 Party Congress, has been hollowed out member by member.

Corruption charges against senior officers are routine in Chinese politics and often serve as a general-purpose instrument of discipline. Accusations of factionalism and disloyalty are different in kind. They imply an organised challenge to the leader's authority rather than personal venality, and they have historically been reserved for cases the leadership regards as threats to regime security.

The timing places the announcement between two major events: Xi's upcoming summit with Trump, where Taiwan, tariffs, rare earths, AI controls and the Iran war are expected on the agenda, and an October party plenum devoted to internal governance and discipline.

Analysis & Assessment

The removal of Zhang is assessed as the clearest indication yet that Xi views the PLA's senior leadership as a potential source of political risk rather than simply a site of graft. By choosing the vocabulary of factions and disloyalty, Beijing is signalling to the officer corps and to retired party elders that proximity to Xi offers no protection. In the near term, command authority over the PLA is now concentrated in Xi personally to a degree not seen since the reform era began.

This carries two opposing implications for external actors. A leader in unmediated control can in principle take faster decisions in a crisis, including over Taiwan. Yet the systematic removal of experienced commanders, particularly at the Joint Staff Department that would plan and run a major operation, is likely to degrade the PLA's near-term readiness for complex joint campaigns. Most Western assessments have treated the purges as lengthening, not shortening, the timeline for any use of force against Taiwan. This case is consistent with that view.

If the nuclear-data leak allegation is eventually substantiated in prosecution documents, the case would take on a counterintelligence dimension of considerable consequence, and it would likely drive a fresh tightening of internal security across China's strategic forces. Heading into the summit, Xi will want to present the expulsions as evidence of firm control. Washington's negotiators will have to judge whether that control rests on a narrower and more brittle base than it appears.