- Lead. Xi Jinping has removed Zhang Youxia, China’s most senior uniformed officer and a vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, placing him under investigation for what state media called “serious disciplinary and legal violations.”
- Fact. Since 2022, more than 100 senior PLA officers across virtually every branch of the armed forces have been swept aside — the largest military purge in modern Chinese history.
- Stake. The removals arrive two weeks before Xi is scheduled to fly to Washington for a bilateral summit with Donald Trump, raising questions about command continuity at a moment of significant external pressure on the PLA.
Zhang Youxia and the Anatomy of the Purge
Zhang Youxia was, until late August, China’s second-highest-ranked military officer — a vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission and a figure close enough to Xi Jinping that the two men had trained together as young officers in Shaanxi. His removal, announced by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee on August 28 via state media Xinhua, is the most politically significant dismissal yet from a purge that began consuming the PLA Rocket Force in 2023.
The formal charge — “serious disciplinary and legal violations” — is the standard framing for corruption proceedings in China’s system. Zhang’s removal follows that of Joint Staff Department chief Liu Zhenli, who was placed under investigation alongside Zhang in a joint announcement by the Ministry of National Defense on January 24, 2026. Together, the two men commanded the PLA’s two most powerful institutional positions below Xi himself.
As analysts noted in early September, the sweep has left numerous senior command positions vacant simultaneously — an unusual situation for any armed force, let alone one that Xi has publicly tasked with being “combat-ready” by 2027.
Readiness Questions and the US-China Summit
The timing is notable. Xi and Donald Trump are scheduled to meet in Washington on September 24 to discuss trade, the US-Iran war, and Taiwan — a summit for which both sides have made significant diplomatic preparations. The removal of Zhang Youxia just weeks before that meeting is unlikely to have been timed carelessly.
Beijing’s stated rationale — that Xi is scrubbing corruption-prone networks to make the PLA more effective — is not inherently implausible. Corruption in procurement and logistics has been documented across multiple services. But outside analysts note that the pace and scope of removals, particularly in the Rocket Force which controls China’s nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles, creates real risks of institutional knowledge loss and command ambiguity at exactly the moment the PLA is being asked to project force in disputed waters.
China has simultaneously been accelerating construction at Antelope Reef in the Paracel Islands, where satellite imagery suggests a full-length airstrip of up to 10,000 feet is being built — potentially the PLA’s largest island base in the disputed waters. Vietnam has protested formally, and the construction has drawn attention at the Pentagon.
What the Purge Reveals
The breadth of the sweep — touching the Rocket Force, the Joint Staff, the CMC, and now its vice-chairmanship — points to a pattern beyond selective anti-corruption enforcement. Whether Xi is genuinely rooting out graft or also eliminating potential factional rivals is a question that cannot be answered from open sources. What is observable is that the PLA’s highest institutional posts are cycling faster than at any point since the Cultural Revolution, and that Xi is consolidating personal authority over the military at a moment of significant external pressure.
In the weeks ahead, the NPC Standing Committee is expected to confirm replacements for both Zhang and Liu. Their identities will be closely watched — not only for what they signal about Xi’s political alliances, but for what they imply about the military posture China intends to project at the summit and beyond.