China Purges Its Top General Days Before Xi's Meeting With Trump

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Two of China's Most Powerful Generals Fall

China's ruling Communist Party has expelled Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, two of the country's highest-ranking military officers, from both the party and the armed forces. State news agency Xinhua announced the move on Monday, saying the pair had committed "serious violations of discipline and law."

Zhang was the senior vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), China's top military command body chaired by Xi Jinping himself. That made him, in effect, the second-most powerful man in the Chinese military and one of Xi's closest and longest-standing allies. Liu served as chief of staff of the commission's Joint Staff Department, which plans combat operations.

Both men have now been stripped of every remaining title. Their cases have been handed over to military prosecutors, a step that typically precedes a criminal trial in China's opaque legal system.

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What the Two Generals Are Accused Of

According to Chinese state media, Zhang and Liu are accused of forming political cliques, helping allies win promotions in exchange for favors, and accepting enormous bribes. Officials described the sums involved as "exceptionally large" and called the misconduct "extremely serious."

The party also accused the two men of disloyalty — a politically loaded charge in a system built on absolute obedience to the leadership. Xinhua said the pair had "crossed red lines" and mixed political wrongdoing with personal enrichment.

Neither general has publicly responded to the accusations, and Chinese authorities have not released details of the evidence against them. Independent verification of the specific charges is not possible, since China's military justice process is closed to outside scrutiny.

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Part of a Long, Deepening Purge

This is not a sudden or isolated event. Investigations into Zhang and Liu were first announced in January, and both men were quietly removed from China's state-level Central Military Commission in late August. Monday's announcement completes their fall by expelling them from the party altogether.

The two generals are only the latest casualties in an anti-corruption campaign inside the Chinese military that Xi Jinping launched in 2012 and has steadily intensified. Dozens of senior officers have been investigated or dismissed in recent years, several of them Politburo members or CMC vice-chairmen — posts once considered untouchable.

Analysts who track the Chinese military say the sweep goes beyond ordinary graft cases. Some see it as evidence of real corruption reaching the top of the world's largest standing army; others argue it also serves as a tool for Xi to eliminate potential rivals and tighten his personal grip on the armed forces. Either reading points to the same uncomfortable fact for Beijing: a one-party system built on secrecy makes it almost impossible for outsiders — or ordinary Chinese citizens — to know which explanation is true.

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Timing: Right Before Xi Meets Trump

The expulsion comes just days before Xi Jinping is scheduled to travel to the United States for talks with President Donald Trump, and only weeks ahead of a major Communist Party conclave in October focused on internal discipline and governance.

Announcing such a damaging story about his own military leadership right before facing Trump is a striking choice for Xi. It suggests Beijing wanted the purge settled and out of the news cycle before high-level diplomacy with Washington begins — a sign that even a leader who tightly controls his country's media still has to manage how instability at home looks to the outside world.

For Washington, the episode is a reminder of the deep and recurring turmoil inside the Chinese Communist Party's military leadership — turmoil that stands in sharp contrast to the transparency expected of institutions in the United States and other democracies.

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What Happens Next

With Zhang and Liu gone, only two men remain in charge of day-to-day oversight of the Central Military Commission under Xi: General Zhang Shengmin and Xi himself. Several other commission seats have been left unfilled after previous purges, leaving China's top military body thinner and more centralized around Xi than at any point in years.

Whether the coming October party meeting will name replacements — or reveal further casualties from the purge — remains to be seen. What is clear is that Xi's decade-long campaign against his own military brass shows no sign of slowing down.

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Sources

1. Reuters — https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-expels-two-top-generals-party-military-alleging-disloyalty-corruption-2026-09-21/
2. South China Morning Post — https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3365646/china-strips-former-generals-zhang-youxia-and-liu-zhenli-top-military-positions
3. Bloomberg — https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-21/china-cites-disloyalty-in-removing-ousted-generals-from-party

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