Zhang Haiyang

Zhang was born in Shanghai in July 1949, of Pingjiang, Hunan ancestry. He is the son of General Zhang Zhen, who was a member of the Central Military Commission.[2] The Zhang family had moved to Pingjiang, Hunan from the Hakka county of Pingyuan, Guangdong.[3] His father-in-law is Sun Keji, a major general and former vice political commissar of the Nanjing Military Region.

Zhang enlisted in the PLA in 1969, and served as a soldier in the Lanzhou Military Region. In the 1980s, he participated in the Battle of Laoshan during the Sino-Vietnamese border conflicts, when he was the political commissar of the 61st Division of the 21st Group Army. He attained the rank of major general in 1995. In 2002, he was promoted to deputy political commissar of the Beijing Military Region, and became a lieutenant general the next year.[2]

In 2005, Zhang was promoted to political commissar of the Chengdu Military Region, replacing General Liu Shutian, who had reached retirement age. During the Great Sichuan earthquake of 2008, Zhang Haiyang, together with Chengdu MR commander Li Shiming, coordinated the military relief efforts. He was promoted to the rank of full general (shang jiang) in July 2009, and Zhang Zhen and Zhang Haiyang became the first pair of father-and-son full generals in the PLA (Zhang Zongxun and Zhang Youxia are another pair). In late 2009, he replaced retiring General Peng Xiaofeng as the 10th political commissar of the Second Artillery Corps, China's strategic missile force. He retired in late 2014, and was succeeded by Wang Jiasheng.[2]

Zhang was a member of the 17th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and is a member of the 18th Central Committee.[1]