FILE – Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Navy Fee attends the opening session of the Nationwide Individuals’s Congress (NPC) on the Nice Corridor of the Individuals in Beijing.
Ng Han Guan/AP/AP
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Ng Han Guan/AP/AP
BEIJING — The Chinese language navy’s prime normal is being investigated for suspected severe violations of self-discipline and legislation the Protection Ministry mentioned Saturday,
Zhang Youxia, the senior of the 2 vice chairs of the highly effective Central Navy Fee, is the most recent determine to fall in a long-running purge of navy officers.
Analysts consider the purges are designed each to reform the navy and to make sure loyalty to Chinese language chief Xi Jinping, who additionally chairs the navy fee. They’re a part of a broader anti-corruption drive that has punished greater than 200,000 officers since Xi got here to energy in 2012.
One other member of the fee, Liu Zhenli, has additionally been positioned underneath investigation by China’s ruling Communist Occasion, a Protection Ministry assertion mentioned. Liu is the chief of workers of the fee’s Joint Workers Division. The fee is the highest navy physique in China.
The assertion didn’t present any particulars on the alleged wrongdoing.
Zhang, who’s 75, joined the Individuals’s Liberation Military in 1968 and is a normal from its floor forces.
The Communist Occasion expelled the opposite vice chair of the fee, He Weidong, final October and changed him with fee member Zhang Shengmin.
In 2024, the occasion expelled two former protection ministers over corruption costs.
The Trump administration launched a brand new Nationwide Protection Technique on Friday acknowledging China as a navy energy that it mentioned must be deterred from dominating the U.S. or its allies.
“This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle,” the technique mentioned. “Rather, a decent peace, on terms favorable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under, is possible.”
