According to sources outside the Great Firewall, Zhang Youxia, the first vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, the Chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, were both in trouble and arrested on January 20.
After Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were absent from the opening ceremony of the seminar for provincial and ministerial-level officials on January 20, 2026, reports emerged that they had run into trouble. On January 24, the Ministry of National Defense announced that both had been placed under case investigation.
The UK Labour Government has officially approved China's construction of a large embassy at the Royal Mint Court mint near the Tower of London, sparking concerns among overseas dissidents regarding intelligence gathering and intimidation.
An overseas source inside the system claimed that on January 20, 2026, while a provincial- and ministerial-level seminar was in session at the Central Party School, a secret force raised by Wang Xiaohong, disguised as Party School staff, carried out a surprise attack on Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli; this version cannot be verified, but neither of the two has appeared in public since.
On January 20, 2026, the Office of the Central Special Mechanism for Combating Formalism and Reducing Burdens at the Grassroots Level, together with the General Office of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, announced: from 2022 to 2024, 34 above-designated-size industrial enterprises in Shuangjiang County, Lincang City, Yunnan Province, cumulatively falsified their reported output value by 3.5 billion yuan.
Rumor has it that on January 20, 2026, the day an incident involving Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli occurred at the Central Party School, Cai Qi briefly took control of the two men: Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin and Director of the Central Guard Bureau Zhou Hongxu.