Tipsheet

Top Chinese General Accused of Leaking Nuclear Secrets to the US

Dmitri Bolt
Dmitri Bolt  |  January 26, 2026 4:30 PM

China's top General anf first-ranked vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, 75, who has long been considered President Xi Jinping's most trusted military ally, has been accused of accepting bribes and leaking nuclear secrets to the United States.

The general isn’t only accused of leaking nuclear weapons secrets, he’s also said to have taken bribes for official promotions before selling technical information to the CIA for personal gain, according to the outlet.

Chinese state media slammed Zhang and fellow People's Liberation Army General Liu Zhenli, who is under investigation for rising through the ranks as quickly as Zhang, for “threatening the Communist Party’s absolute leadership” and “undermining the system of ultimate responsibility,” which they say rests entirely with President Xi.

“This move is unprecedented in the history of the Chinese military and represents the total annihilation of the high command,” Christopher Johnson, head of China Strategies Group, a political-risk consulting firm said.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Zhang, 75 years old, and Gu couldn’t be reached for comment. In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, Liu Pengyu, a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said the party’s decision to investigate Zhang underscores that the leadership maintains “a full-coverage, zero-tolerance approach to combating corruption.”

Some analysts say Xi’s latest crackdown on corruption and disloyalty in the armed forces marks the most aggressive dismantling of China’s military leadership since the Mao Zedong era.

Like Xi, Zhang, a member of the party’s elite Politburo, is one of China’s “princelings,” as the descendants of revolutionary elders and high-ranking party officials are known. Zhang’s father fought alongside Xi’s father during the Chinese civil war that led to Mao’s Communist forces seizing power in 1949, and both men later rose to senior roles.

Their fall comes only months after the party announced in October that it had expelled nine senior military commanders on corruption charges, including China’s then-Number 2 general, He Weidong, who was also a vice chairman of the Xi-chaired Central Military Commission, which commands the armed forces, and a Politburo member.