Xu Caihou

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.

Xu graduated in 1968, in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, and was sent to the countryside to perform manual agricultural labour for over a year on a military-run farm in Tangyuan County in China's northeastern hinterlands.

Subsequently, due to his being of proletarian class background (his parents were factory workers), he was allowed the 'privilege' of re-joining the army.

Xu enlisted in the spring of 1970 as an officer cadet and was stationed in Jilin province.

After joining the officer corps, it took him four years to earn his first promotion.

After the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was eager to promote young university graduates as part of his military-reform program.

Most of the commanding officers of the PLA at the time had only informal or middle school-level education.

Beginning in 1982, Xu earned a series of quick promotions.

Xu served in Jilin province for much of his early career, generally in roles that facilitated military-political relations.

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.

Xu became the political commissar of the 16th Group Army in 1990 and was promoted to major general shortly thereafter.

In an incident upon moving to Beijing for work, Xu was offered an air conditioner to cope with the city's summer heat, as a gift from a classmate in university.

He reportedly refused the offer, on the grounds that he did not want to have a privilege that his superior officer, who was managing without an air conditioner, lacked.

Next, Xu served as the chief editor of the People's Liberation Army Daily newspaper; he stayed on the role for just over a year, being promoted again to lieutenant general in the process.

In 1996 Xu became political commissar of the Jinan Military Region.

In 1996, he became the political commissar of the Jinan Military Region, with a vast area of jurisdiction over military units in several eastern Chinese provinces.

Xu's mission in facilitating "political affairs" in the military meant that, in practice, he was in charge of the promotion and performance evaluation of army officers.

In 1999, Xu was promoted to the rank of General (Shang Jiang), the highest non-wartime rank in the PLA, and also joined the Central Military Commission, in addition to taking charge of the General Political Department (GPD) as its executive deputy head.

In December 2000 he was named the head of the Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Central Military Commission, the military's anti-graft and disciplinary enforcement body.

Xu's ascendancy in the military also resulted in his rise in the Communist Party's political hierarchy.

In November 2002, he assumed full leadership over the GPD.

He became vice-chairman of the CMC in September 2004.

Observers believe that through Xu, Jiang continued to influence affairs in the military despite his official retirement in 2004; some retired officers simply described Xu and his partner of equal rank Guo Boxiong as "Jiang's proxy in the military."

During his term as Central Military Commission Vice-chairman, beginning in 2004, Xu wielded significant authority over personnel decisions in the upper echelons of the military.

Xu was seen by some observers as the day-to-day executive authority in the upper military ranks because CCP General Secretary and Central Military Chairman Hu Jintao, nominally Xu's superior, took a relatively hands-off approach to military affairs.

He also held a seat on the 25-member Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party between 2007 and 2012.

Born to a working-class family in Liaoning province, Xu spent much of his earlier career in northeastern China.

He retired from office in March 2013.

In March 2014, Xu was detained and put under investigation on suspicion of bribery in one of the highest profile corruption investigations in PLA history.

In June 2014, Xu was expelled from the Communist Party.

Xu allegedly accumulated massive wealth by routinely demanding large bribes for the promotion of officers under him during his time as vice-chairman of the CMC.

Xu Caihou (June 1943 – March 15, 2015) was a Chinese general in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) 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.

Xu was undergoing legal proceedings and facing a court martial but charges were dropped after he died of bladder cancer in March 2015.

At the party's 16th National Congress, Xu became a member of the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party, a body in charge of the implementation of party policy.

Xu's rapid promotions at around the turn of the century were attributed to the support given to him by then-Central Military Commission Chairman Jiang Zemin.