(TibetanReview.net, Oct30’26) – Already best known among China’s top leaders thus far for the scale and depth of his sustained anti-corruption campaign at the highest levels, especially in the country’s armed forces, President Xi Jinping’s latest move has ensnared former nuclear, aerospace and shipbuilding chiefs alongside former theatre command leaders, noted scmp.com Oct 30.
The four-day, fifth plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China confirmed the expulsion of 33 full and alternate Central Committee members, including 16 senior generals, indicating that the unprecedented anti-corruption storm sweeping through the armed forces shows no sign of abating. The gathering, focused on party discipline and political loyalty, concluded with the adoption of a document aimed at “deepening party self-governance,” the report said.
The communique was cited as saying the party leadership under President Xi had confronted its internal problems with “enormous political courage and a strong sense of responsibility”, and that it was turning the knife inward and eliminating “serious hidden dangers” within the military.
The closed-door meeting of the largest of the party’ s top decision-making bodies was marked by the highest rate of absences in the post-Mao era, underscoring the scale of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and wider political shake-up, noted Reuters Oct 29.
In total, 279 full and alternate members of the leadership body attended the gathering this week, compared with the 376 originally named in 2022, a summary of the proceedings dispatched by the official Xinhua news agency showed. This means more than a quarter, or 25.8%, of the original cohort was absent, many of them due to purges, the report said.
Those expelled from the party included the already disgraced former Politburo member Ma Xingrui and former senior military leader Zhang Youxia. The list also includes former military official Liu Zhenli, former senior diplomat Liu Jianchao, former industry minister Jin Zhuanglong and former chairman of China’s securities regulator Yi Huiman.
The party has also removed Li Yunze, former head of China’s financial regulator, from his position within the party, the communique has said.
The Oct 29 communique has argued that Xi’s consolidated authority had enabled the party to curb long-unchecked misconduct, resolve entrenched institutional failings, eliminate serious hidden dangers within the party, state and military, and reverse the laxity of party discipline, making it stronger through “revolutionary tempering.”
Reuters noted that Xi’s public remarks suggest that he regards the self-cleansing campaign as the party’s only safeguard against decay, essential for ensuring its survival and ability to rule indefinitely. Relentless self-discipline and periodic “self-revolution” for Xi offer the party a means of escaping the dynastic cycle of rise, decline and fall.
Xi “seems willing to tolerate significant short-term disruption as an investment in the party’s long-term resilience,” Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser on China at London’s Tony Blair Institute, has said.
“It’s less about purging elite rivals, more about building a disciplined system that can sustain Xi’s political priorities across leadership cycles,” she has argued.
The fifth plenum since the current leadership cohort was formed in 2022 also set the tone for the 21st Party Congress for the second half of 2027 in Beijing, effectively starting proceedings for China’s tightly choreographed, twice-a-decade top reshuffle, when Xi is expected to extend his rule for another five-year term.