3 Senior Chinese Commanders Are Ousted on Corruption Charges

Udumbara Udumbara
Feb 26, 2026 - 11:00 Updated: Feb 26, 2026 - 10:47
0
3 Senior Chinese Commanders Are Ousted on Corruption Charges

.

The Chinese regime’s sweeping purges in the military establishment have ensnared three more senior commanders.

Adm. Wang Renhua, former security chief of the military, was expelled for “serious violations of discipline and law,” the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, the governing body of China’s rubber-stamp legislature, announced on Feb. 24.

For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that language often refers to political corruption, but it can also be associated with political disloyalty.

Wang was among three senior military officers removed from the CCP-controlled legislature in December 2025. No official reason was given for their dismissals at the time.

This is the first official acknowledgment that Wang has been caught up in the anti-corruption campaign, after months of speculation that Beijing had placed him under investigation.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is facing an unprecedented wave of purges, with dozens of high-ranking officers being ousted over the past three years alone. Last month, investigations were launched against two of the country’s most senior generals, raising questions about the military’s combat readiness.
Wang’s fall from grace came less than two years after he was promoted to admiral, the highest rank in the military, by CCP leader Xi Jinping.

Since 2019, Wang has headed the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, a powerful organ that exercises the Party’s control over the military’s courts and prosecutors. But his photo disappeared from the senior leadership page of the commission’s official website in October 2025, indicating he had stepped down from the post.

The two other commanders removed for similar reasons are Lt. Gen. Wang Peng, the former head of the PLA’s training department, and Gen. Zhang Hongbing, the former political commissar of the armed police.

A member of the Party’s governing Central Committee, Zhang had vanished from state media mentions and political events for months, including a key Party conclave in late October last year, known as the Fourth Plenum, without any explanation.

A week after the plenum ended, the armed police decided to revoke Zhang’s membership at the country’s top legislature, according to the newly released report.

Zhang, who turned 60 this month, previously served as the political commissar of the Eastern Theater Command, which oversees some of the regime’s most strategically important areas, including the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

The ongoing purges of the PLA’s top brass have raised questions about Xi’s decade-long investment in modernizing the country’s armed forces.

According to the latest annual survey published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies on Feb. 24, the ongoing purges have left the Chinese military with “serious deficiencies” in its command structure.

More than 100 senior PLA officers—who hold general or lieutenant general ranks—have likely been purged since 2022, according to a tally by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“While the precise reasons for Xi Jinping’s toppling of any particular senior officer remain unclear, the data shows that the scope and scale of this purge have few precedents—and underscores that Xi has culled virtually an entire generation of senior PLA officers,” Jonathan A. Czin and Allie Matthias, researchers at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a CSIS report on the findings.
.
Read More