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by Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Chief International Correspondent
BEIJING (Worthy News) – China’s military leadership is facing major upheaval after its most senior general — a close ally of President Xi Jinping — was accused of leaking information about the Communist country’s nuclear-weapons program to the United States and committing other “serious violations of discipline and law.”
General Zhang Youxia, 75, is also alleged to have accepted bribes for official acts, including promoting an officer to the post of defense minister, according to sources familiar with a high-level briefing on the allegations.
The alleged wrongdoing reportedly occurred while Zhang served as joint vice-chairperson of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the ruling body overseeing China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Second only to Xi in the military command structure, Zhang was long viewed as the Chinese leader’s closest military ally.
Yet China’s Ministry of National Defense announced that Zhang and Liu Zhenli, chief of staff of the CMC’s joint staff department, were under investigation.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS LEAK SHAKING LEADERSHIP
People familiar with a weekend briefing attended by top Chinese officers said Zhang has been accused of sharing “key technical information” on China’s nuclear weapons with Washington, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.
There was no immediate reaction from President Xi or his U.S. counterpart, President Donald J. Trump.
However, China’s army newspaper Liberation Army Daily said Zhang and Liu “seriously betrayed the trust and expectations” of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the CMC.
The paper added that Zhang “fostered political and corruption problems that undermined the party’s absolute leadership over the military and threatened the party’s ruling foundation.”
Zhang had been retained in military leadership past the normal retirement age, a sign of Xi’s high level of trust in the general — trust that has now collapsed, observers noted.
XI’S ANTI-CORRUPTION DRIVE TARGETS PLA
The Chinese military has been a central target of Xi’s sweeping corruption crackdown launched in 2012.
That campaign reached the upper echelons of the PLA in 2023, when the elite Rocket Force came under investigation amid concerns that classified information may have been secretly shared with the United States.
China’s Rocket Force oversees the country’s land-based missile forces, including nuclear weapons and many of its most advanced conventional missiles, Worthy News learned.
Analysts said the removal of a figure as senior as Zhang raises new questions about the stability and cohesion of China’s military leadership.
The turmoil comes as China remains under Western scrutiny over its readiness and willingness to attack and seize Taiwan — a move that could bring Beijing into direct conflict with the United States in the Indo-Pacific.
CHINA-TAIWAN TENSIONS ADDING TO PRESSURE
Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia programme at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank, said in published remarks that “the purge raises larger issues about political stability in a rising, nuclear superpower.”
“It could be seen by many as reflecting poor judgment about some of [Xi’s] prior appointments,” Goldstein said.
Of the seven men appointed to the CMC at the Communist Party congress in 2022, only two remain untouched by anti-corruption investigations: Xi himself and Zhang Shengmin, the CMC’s anti-graft officer.
The developments are expected to intensify international attention on Beijing’s armed forces amid growing geopolitical uncertainty across the Asia-Pacific.
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