This final installment opens with a former Inner Mongolia party chief implicated by a predecessor already known for a viral scandal, traces the military purge to a bruising factional fight inside the armed forces, and closes with a look at officials quietly demoted in 2026 without any public accusation at all.
Since January, China’s purge of senior officials has reached into the very top of its military command structure, in addition to claiming a former provincial party chief and several officials who were demoted rather than formally investigated. If Communist Party officials still fail to grasp the brutality of the system they serve, the outlook for their own careers, and in some cases their lives, does not look secure.
A former Inner Mongolia party chief fell after being implicated by a predecessor known for a viral scandal
On Jan. 29, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and National Supervisory Commission announced that Sun Shaocheng, deputy director of the Social Development Committee of the National People’s Congress, was suspected of “serious violations of discipline and law” and under investigation.
Sun’s career accelerated quickly after Xi Jinping took power. In March 2018, he was named the first minister of the newly created Ministry of Veterans Affairs and served as its party secretary. In 2022, he became party secretary of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. In September 2025, not long before his fall, he moved to Beijing to become deputy director of the legislature’s Social Development Committee.
Sun’s case is entangled with that of Fang Yongxiang, who served as his subordinate during Sun’s time at the Ministry of Veterans Affairs before going on to become director of the General Office of the Central Military Commission, the body that commands China’s armed forces and is chaired by Xi Jinping himself. In the period around Sun’s fall, Fang disappeared from public view for an extended stretch, and rumors of trouble circulated widely. Fang was notably absent both when Xi Jinping met with military representatives in Tibet in August 2025 and when he met with military representatives in Xinjiang the following month. At the Party’s fourth plenum in October 2025, eight alternate members of the Central Committee failed to be promoted to full membership, a customary step normally taken to fill vacancies left by retirements or purges; Fang was among the five lieutenant generals on that list, a strong signal that he was already in political trouble. Analysts believe Sun and Fang shared what amounts to a “rise together, fall together” relationship built on mutual benefit.
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According to Chinese-language reports, Sun was implicated by his predecessor as Inner Mongolia’s party chief, Wang Lixia, the region’s former chairwoman who became a subject of viral videos and earned the nickname “the cross-dressing queen” before her own fall in August 2025. After Sun took over the region’s leadership, his son reportedly made frequent visits to Inner Mongolia and grew close to Wang’s son; the two family networks are said to have jointly meddled in project contracting, personnel appointments, and mining development across a wide range of sectors.
Sun’s downfall illustrates a broader dynamic that Chinese commentators sum up with an idiom describing corrupt cronies as “a nest of snakes and rats”: officials flatter and exploit one another when times are good, then turn and inform on each other the moment trouble arrives.
The vice chairman of China’s military and its top joint-operations general were purged within days, without warning
The most consequential case in this year’s purge involves Zhang Youxia, a member of the Politburo and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, a commission member and chief of its Joint Staff Department, the body responsible for coordinating operations across China’s armed forces. According to Chinese-language media reports, their fall followed a bruising, mutually destructive factional fight with two other senior officers, He Weidong, another CMC vice chairman, and Miao Hua, a commission member who directed the military’s Political Work Department.
The fight reportedly began when Xi Jinping, working with He Weidong and Miao Hua, purged a group of officers who had served under Zhang Youxia during his earlier tenure as director of the commission’s Equipment Development Department. That group included Li Shangfu, then a commission member, state councilor, and defense minister, along with a number of generals, lieutenant generals, and major generals. At the same time, Xi reportedly opened a quiet investigation into Zhang Youxia himself, along with another senior general, Zhang Shengmin, who heads the military’s own internal discipline body.
Zhang Youxia, according to this account, was pushed into a counterattack. In July 2024, during the Party’s third plenum, Xi Jinping suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. With backing from Party elders, “princeling” descendants of the revolutionary generation, and senior generals, Zhang is said to have obtained evidence of serious corruption against Miao Hua and He Weidong and then pressed Xi to act on it. Xi reportedly had little choice but to agree to remove both men.
Once Miao Hua was detained, he quickly implicated a large number of generals, lieutenant generals, and major generals who had paid bribes to him or sought his help securing promotions, including He Weidong himself. That set off a cascade of arrests among senior officers. Officers who had built their careers under Xi’s patronage, a group sometimes described as “Xi’s army,” were purged in batches, leaving the leader, according to the reporting, increasingly on edge. It was in this atmosphere that Xi moved suddenly against Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli.
On Jan. 26, 2026, Drew Thompson, a former Pentagon official who oversaw the Defense Department’s relationships with China, Taiwan, and Mongolia and now serves as a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, wrote publicly that he had heard as early as 2023 that Xi Jinping was quietly investigating both Zhang Youxia and Zhang Shengmin. Thompson said the information had come from Minnie Chan, a defense correspondent for the South China Morning Post.
Then, on Jan. 24, 2026, China’s Ministry of National Defense abruptly announced that Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were suspected of “serious violations of discipline and law” and that, following deliberation by the Party’s Central Committee, both men would be placed under formal investigation.
The announcement itself broke from precedent in several ways. It came from the Ministry of National Defense rather than the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection or another disciplinary body, and the decision was attributed to deliberation by the “Party Central Committee” rather than to the disciplinary commission’s ordinary review process. The speed also caught observers off guard: just eight days earlier, Zhang had appeared in public at the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection’s fifth plenary session. Other fallen officials this year, including He Weidong and Ma Xingrui, disappeared from public view roughly six months before their downfalls were confirmed — a contrast that points to the depth of hostility toward Zhang and Liu within the leadership.
The Party subsequently used its official military newspaper, the PLA Daily, to level a lengthy set of accusations against the two men, including that they had “severely trampled and undermined the system of the Central Military Commission chairman’s overall responsibility,” the principle that vests ultimate personal command authority over the armed forces in Xi Jinping as the commission’s chairman; that they had “seriously undermined the Party’s absolute leadership over the military” and endangered the foundations of Party rule; that they had “seriously damaged the image and authority” of the commission’s leadership; that they had “seriously undermined the political and ideological unity” of the armed forces; and that they had caused serious damage to the military’s political loyalty-building, political culture, and combat readiness.
The nature of these charges makes clear that Zhang and Liu’s alleged offenses were not primarily financial. They were framed, instead, as political disloyalty, the gravest charge the Party can level against a senior military officer.
Both men had long been considered Xi loyalists. Zhang fought in China’s 1979 border war with Vietnam and carries real combat experience, a rarity among China’s senior officer corps. He is also a childhood friend of Xi Jinping, and their families have been close for generations; Zhang played a central role in securing Xi’s continued hold on power through the Party’s nineteenth and twentieth national congresses. That Xi ultimately moved against two men this closely bound to him has unsettled senior officials across the Party, the government, and the military, driving home a message that in the Party’s unforgiving system, no one, no matter how loyal or how senior, is safe.
A final verdict and punishment for Zhang and Liu has been repeatedly delayed. The national legislature has convened several sessions since their investigations were announced without stripping either man of his status as a delegate. On June 26, 2026, the standing committee of the fourteenth National People’s Congress held its twenty-third session and announced the termination of delegate status for fourteen officials, including Politburo member Ma Xingrui and three full generals, Xu Xueqiang, Li Fengbiao, and Guo Puxiao. Zhang and Liu were conspicuously absent from that list.
Analysts point to continued division at the top of the Party as the likely explanation. Some suggest that factions within the party, government, and military apparatus are unhappy with the move against Zhang and are resisting further action, leaving the matter in an unresolved standoff, one reflected in the notable absence of the usual public “wave of condemnation” that typically follows a senior purge. Others argue instead that Zhang and Liu’s alleged offenses are severe enough that investigators simply need more time to build their case. According to unverified claims circulating in Chinese-language media, Zhang Youxia is accused of taking bribes totaling 1.7 billion yuan, or roughly $235 million, and some observers believe he could ultimately face a suspended death sentence. Whatever the outcome, the prospects for both men do not look favorable.
Beyond formal investigations: officials quietly demoted without public charges
Not every official caught up in this year’s purge was formally investigated. Some were simply demoted, with no public accusation at all.
On April 29, 2026, the website of China’s National Financial Regulatory Administration, the national banking and insurance regulator, quietly removed the biography page of its director, Li Yunze. Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper subsequently reported that Li was believed to have used his official authority to help settle a case involving his son’s drunk driving, and that he had been demoted to the non-leadership post of first-level inspector, a rank without real power. On May 29 and June 5, Party authorities announced, respectively, that Ding Xiangqun, party secretary and chairman of the People’s Insurance Company of China, would take over as party secretary and director of the financial regulator. On June 26, the National People’s Congress standing committee also terminated Li Yunze’s status as a legislative delegate.
Separately, Chen Xi, the former head of the Party’s Organization Department, the body that vets and approves appointments across the entire Party and state apparatus, was removed in June from his post as president of the Central Party School, the institution that trains the Party’s rising cadres in ideology and governance. Unconfirmed reports suggest he was also demoted to a much lower, deputy-bureau-level rank.
Built by the system, broken by the system
The officials removed in the first half of 2026 share some common threads. Several previously ran provincial political and legal affairs committees, the bodies that direct police and courts; others had ties to the military’s logistics apparatus. Both kinds of institutions have long served as instruments the Party uses to suppress dissidents and ordinary citizens alike.
It would be unfair to say all of these officials lacked ability, talent, or, at some point, genuine conviction. They were not born corrupt or cruel. Like anyone else, they began as ordinary people. But once they entered the Party’s ranks and rose through its official hierarchy, they were carried along by a system that rewards flattery, tolerates graft, and punishes candor, one that eroded whatever restraint they might otherwise have maintained. In the end, the same Party that enabled their rise discarded them, using charges of corruption and disloyalty to turn them into casualties of a system built to produce exactly this outcome. China’s twenty-first Party congress is still more than a year away. If the past six months are any indication, the list of ministerial-rank officials swept up before it convenes is far from finished.
