BEIJING: China has reshuffled its military top brass in a move analysts said on Monday was probably aimed at ensuring that President Hu Jintao remains commander in chief of the military after a 10-yearly leadership change.

The Communist Party has also launched an inquiry into the alleged wealth of Premier Wen Jiabao’s family at his own request, a report said on Monday.

At a top Communist Party meeting on Sunday, Hu oversaw the promotion of Generals Fan Changlong and Xu Qiliang as vice chairmen of the powerful 12-member Central Military Commission (CMC), Xinhua news agency said.

Hu, the CMC chairman, is slated to step down as head of the ruling party at a congress starting this week and will retire as national president in March as part of China’s once-a-decade leadership change.

But Willy Lam, a China politics expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said: “As long as he is the CMC chief, he will still be the power behind the throne.”

“Hu Jintao would want to serve another five years, particularly given the fact that he has to watch over his political proteges . . . and protect his political legacy.”

Hu took over control of the party from Jiang Zemin in 2002 but, as part of China’s opaque and secretive political process, only succeeded him as CMC chairman in 2004.

Unlike most modern states, China’s 2.3 million-strong military—the world’s biggest—is directly run by the ruling Communist Party, not by the government, an arrangement that stems from the revolution that brought the party to power in 1949.

The late revolutionary leader Mao Zedong—who said that “power comes from the barrel of the gun”—used the People’s Liberation Army not only to advance revolution, but also to protect the party’s political power, Lam said.

The two incoming CMC vice chairmen will be tasked with pushing forward the modernization of China’s military and overseeing an increasingly powerful arsenal.

China’s military forces include nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles and a recently commissioned second-hand aircraft carrier purchased from Ukraine.

Xu is the first air force general to become a vice chairman of the committee, reflecting the importance China places on quickly developing its air capability.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) said that Wen had written to the Politburo Standing Committee—the country’s highest policy-making body, of which he is a member—formally asking for the probe.

It comes after The New York Times reported that Wen’s family had accumulated at least $2.7 billion in assets in various sectors, according to an analysis of company and regulatory filings from 1992-2012.

The report on Wen’s letter and the inquiry is unusual. The communist party normally ensures that its internal affairs are covered by a strict veil of secrecy.

The financial allegations are particularly embarrassing for Wen, who is expected to step down as premier next March, as he is the standard-bearer of reformers in the party and has campaigned against rampant corruption.

The New York Times report came days before the start of a party congress where a once-in-a-decade leadership transition will begin, and the run-up to the meeting has seen months of factional maneuvering.

The SCMP quoted its sources as saying conservative party elders “known to dislike the premier’s more liberal stance” had “urged him to provide detailed explanations on all the major allegations” in the US newspaper’s report.

Among other details, The New York Times said that Wen’s 90-year-old mother owned a stake valued at $120 million in 2007 in China’s Ping An insurance giant.

Last week the SCMP quoted lawyers for Wen’s relatives denying the claim.

“The so-called ‘hidden riches’ of Wen Jiabao’s family members in The New York Times’ report does not exist,” it quoted a statement from them as saying.

The lawyers said that they would continue to “make clarifications regarding other untrue reports” by the newspaper and reserved the right to hold it “legally responsible”.

They said that Wen “has never played any role in the business activities of his family members” and had not allowed those activities to influence his policies.

The report found no indication that Wen had intervened on behalf of family members and said that he himself did not appear to have accumulated assets. It did not suggest that any of the family’s business activities were illegal.

The New York Times has said on its website that it stands by the story.