Xu Caihou

Xu Caihou
徐才厚
Xu Caihou in October 2009
Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission
In office State Commission: 13 March 2005 – 14 March 2013 Party Commission: 19 September 2004 – 15 November 2012 Serving with Guo Boxiong, Cao Gangchuan and Xi Jinping
Chairman	Hu Jintao
Head of the People's Liberation Army General Political Department
In office November 2002 – September 2004
Preceded by	Yu Yongbo
Succeeded by	Li Jinai
Secretary of the Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Central Military Commission
In office December 2000 – November 2002
Preceded by	Zhou Ziyu
Succeeded by	Zhang Shutian
Personal details
Born	June 1943 Wafangdian, Liaoning, China
Died	March 15, 2015 (aged 71) Beijing, China
Political party	Communist Party of China(1971–2014, expelled)
Alma mater	Harbin Military Engineering Institute
Military service
Allegiance	People's Republic of China
Service/branch	People's Liberation Army
Years of service	1968–2012
Rank	General (stripped in 2014)
Commands	Jinan Military Region (1996–1999)

Xu Caihou (Chinese: 徐才厚; June 1943 – March 15, 2015) was a general in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China and Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the country's top military council. As Vice-Chairman of the CMC, he was one of the top ranking officers of the People's Liberation Army. He also held a seat on the 25-member Politburo of the Communist Party of China between 2007 and 2012.

Born to a working-class family in Liaoning province, Xu spent much of his earlier career in northeastern China. He moved to Beijing in 1990 to become political commissar of the 16th Group Army, later serving as editor of the PLA's flagship newspaper, the PLA Daily. In 1996 Xu became political commissar of the Jinan Military Region. He became Vice-Chairman of the CMC in September 2004. He retired from office in March 2013.

Xu was detained and put under investigation on suspicion of bribery in March 2014, in one of the highest profile corruption investigations in PLA history, and was expelled from the Communist Party in June 2014. It was alleged that Xu had traded "massive bribes" for the promotion of officers under him during his time as Vice-Chairman of the CMC. Xu was undergoing legal proceedings and facing a court martial but charges were dropped after he died of bladder cancer in March 2015.

Xu was born in 1943 to a working-class family in the town of Wafangdian, Liaoning province; his parents were factory workers. He attended No. 8 Middle School in present-day Dalian. He achieved high scores on his Gaokao exams and was admitted to the elite Harbin Military Engineering Institute in Harbin, where he studied electrical engineering. The institute was a feeder school for the army, and produced many graduates who later went on to become high-ranking officers in the PLA. In April 1966, just prior to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Xu Caihou, along with all the students attending the institute, were mandated by the government to leave the military to take on civilian jobs.