China removes Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli from the state military commission

China's National People's Congress Standing Committee on Friday removed Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli from the state Central Military Commission, Xinhua reported. Zhang loses the post of vice-chairman of the state CMC. Liu, who headed the Joint Staff Department, is removed as a member. The announcement follows investigations opened in January for what the Defence Ministry called serious violations of discipline and law.

The state commission now has two sitting members: President Xi Jinping, who chairs it, and Zhang Shengmin, the vice-chairman who oversees military discipline. The body had seven members before the latest purge cycle.

Who they were

Zhang Youxia was the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the People's Liberation Army. As the senior vice-chairman of the CMC he stood immediately below Xi in the military chain. He also sat on the Communist Party Politburo. Both he and Liu fought in the late-1970s campaign against Vietnam. Until January, Zhang was widely treated as one of Xi's closest military partners.

Liu Zhenli ran the Joint Staff Department, the office that handles combat planning. In January the Defence Ministry named both men as suspects. A PLA Daily commentary that month said they had betrayed the Party's trust and damaged the principle of absolute Party control over the armed forces.

Reuters notes a technical split that still matters inside the system. China maintains two CMCs that usually have the same membership: one of the Party and one of the state. Friday's action is a state-side removal. Xinhua did not say the two men had been publicly stripped of their Party CMC posts. In practice the state list is the one the parliament can change in open session.

Twelve deputies go with them

Zhang and Liu also disappeared from an updated list of National People's Congress deputies published on Friday. Ten other lawmakers came off the same list. Among them were Lieutenant General Zhong Shaojun, a former director of the CMC General Office, and General Ju Qiansheng, a former commander of the Strategic Support Force. Gao Shiwen, a former mayor of Nanchang who had worked at China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, was also removed.

Loss of an NPC seat is the formal step that follows an investigation that has already taken a person out of operational command. It does not, by itself, announce a verdict. Chinese official language still uses the phrase serious violations of discipline and law as a stand-in for corruption and related charges until a later statement is issued.

What the empty table means

A two-member state CMC is not a design. It is the residue of successive removals. Xi has run anti-graft campaigns through the PLA for more than a decade. Rocket Force commanders, equipment officials and, now, the last of the senior officers who sat on the commission before the latest round of appointments have gone. Zhang's fall is the one that still surprises people who follow the hierarchy, because of his rank and the assumption that proximity to Xi was protection.

The remaining vice-chairman, Zhang Shengmin, is a disciplinarian, not a theatre commander. Operational planning now sits with officers who are not on the state commission at all. That can be tightened later by new appointments. Friday's meeting did not name replacements.

For foreign militaries that watch the PLA order of battle, the practical point is the vacuum at the top of the joint staff and the absence of an experienced vice-chairman who had seen combat. For the Party, the point is different. Control of the gun remains the test Xi has set for himself. The list of men who failed it grew by two names on Friday, and by twelve seats in the parliament the same afternoon.