China’s former Western Theatre Command chief General Zhao Zongqi, who led the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during the 2020 Galwan clash with India, has been stripped of his Communist Party membership, while two other senior military commanders have been removed from the country’s supreme military command body.China’s top political advisory body, the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), stripped Gen Zhao of his membership.News agency Reuters, citing China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, reported that the CPPCC meeting approved the decision to remove Zhao from his positions as a member of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee and Vice Chairman of the Committee on Ethnic and Religious Affairs, and to revoke his membership of the CPPCC.Gen Zhao led the PLA’s Western Theatre Command from 2016 to 2020. He was appointed its first commander when the theatre was created following PLA reforms in 2016, overseeing the entire contested India-China border along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).Zhao held the key command during major geopolitical flashpoints, including the 2017 Doklam standoff in southeastern Sikkim and the 2020 China-India border skirmishes in eastern Ladakh that led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of PLA personnel.He had officially handed over command to General Zhang Xudong in late 2020, after reaching the standard retirement age.Meanwhile, Reuters reported that China on Friday removed two senior military officers from its supreme military command body, the state Central Military Commission (CMC), following investigations over suspected serious violations of discipline and law.Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were removed from the seven-member commission led by President Xi Jinping.Zhang was the second-in-command under Xi as Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission and a member of China’s elite Politburo. Liu was a CMC member and chief of staff of the CMC’s Joint Staff Department.The military has been one of the main targets of a broader corruption crackdown ordered by Xi in 2012.Last month, Xi urged senior leaders of the ruling Communist Party to deepen the fight against corruption in the military. The years-long campaign has seen scores of senior officials and top generals investigated, removed and purged.China has parallel Communist Party and state CMC structures, but they function as a single institution.Friday’s announcement by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress concerns Zhang and Liu’s positions in the state CMC. This means they have been stripped of their posts in the state-run Central Military Commission, but not from the military commission of the ruling Communist Party of China.Zhang and Liu’s names were removed from an updated list of deputies published by China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, on Friday, indicating that they had officially lost their seats, along with 10 other lawmakers.Among those removed are Lieutenant General Zhong Shaojun, former director of the CMC General Office, and General Ju Qiansheng, a former commander of the military’s Strategic Support Force.