China's Shengmin promoted after graft purge

Chinese military official Zhang Shengmin, 67, was promoted to become the country’s number two general at a key Communist Party meeting on Thursday, Xinhua reported, after a military corruption purge snared dozens of top brass.

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The statement was released on the last day of a closed-door meeting of the 300-plus member Communist Party Central Committee in Beijing. The meeting, known as the Fourth Plenum, also discussed a five-year economic development plan to achieve technological self-reliance amid an intensifying rivalry with the United States. The elite Central Committee also replaced II members at the meeting, marking its highest personnel turnover since 2017, with eight generals having been expelled for corruption last week.