Summary
Plenary sessions of the Central Committee, the upper echelon of China’s ruling Communist Party, are major events on the country’s political calendar. …
When China’s political elites gather for a key conclave in Beijing later this month, the increasingly empty auditorium will speak loudly to the event’s theme – the ruling Communist Party’s strict self-discipline and its never-ending fight against corruption.
The fifth plenum of the party’s 20th Central Committee will also serve as an important venue for the political momentum of next year’s quinquennial leadership transition and ratify disciplinary verdicts against dozens of fallen cadres.
The four-day closed-door meeting comes roughly one year ahead of the 21st National Party Congress in late 2027 and is poised to formalise one of the most extensive turnovers of senior party, state and military personnel in modern Chinese political history.
According to a tally by the South China Morning Post, 20 full and seven alternate members are facing corruption investigations and await formal expulsion from the Central Committee.
The SCMP’s research also shows that about 35 full and alternate members who did not appear at last year’s plenum have made no public appearances in the current cycle, indicating potential trouble for their political careers.
The fifth plenum, from October 26 to 29, is also set to endorse a key document outlining a long list of measures by the party to maintain internal discipline, ensure political loyalty and fight corruption.
Xie Maosong, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Strategic Studies at Tsinghua University, noted that this focus on the party’s governance came seven years after a similar document that zeroed in on modernising the nation’s governing capacity.
“In 2019, the focus was on how to run the government and manage society better. Now, the focus is on the party ruling China,” Xie said.
“The reason is simple: China’s overall governance starts from the ruling party. The party’s successful and effective self-governance is a prerequisite for China’s long-term governance.”
Cutting down sick trees
As the countdown to 2027 begins, the fifth plenum is set to see a fresh push to cement better party governance control and ensure uncompromised loyalty ahead of the next party congress.
Beijing issued a series of blunt warnings via the script of a January speech by President Xi Jinping, published in the party’s top theoretical journal Qiushi on October 15. It was the first time some of the details had been made public.
In the speech, Xi argued that internal regulations had long been too vague. He demanded systemic reforms to prevent “using a cattle pen to confine a cat” – a traditional idiom for lax rules that fail to restrain misbehaviour.
Emphasising that corruption remained widespread and prone to recurring within the party, Xi pledged to uproot or cut down “sick trees” wherever necessary.
The metaphor, from ancient Chinese poetry, suggests that new life will flourish beyond decaying trees, with the new replacing the old.
Fighting corruption is also a major focus of “Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building”, a latest addition to the paramount leader’s expanding theoretical canon that was made public just months ahead of the plenum.
Officially introduced to the party in June, the political doctrine is aimed at building a “Marxist party with long-term governance”.
Besides the relentless drive to ensure officials “do not have the audacity, opportunity or desire to commit corruption”, the doctrine calls for the party’s centralised leadership to avoid divisions that will weaken the party.
It insists on comprehensive and rigorous self-governance to enforce discipline and continuous self-reform across all levels, as well as solid political and theoretical bases to enhance loyalty and avoid weakening the party’s ideological foundations.
The doctrine also demands a robust organisational system to train and select high-calibre officials who strictly follow party directives.
According to Xie from Tsinghua, strict and comprehensive party governance is a “key pillar” of Xi’s party building thought, especially at the juncture of the transition period for leading officials.
“With the party’s self-governance system in place, the next batch of leading cadres will have a unified code of conduct and they can have a cleaner start,” he said.
A Nanjing-based analyst said that while Xi’s sustained, hard-hitting efforts may address the symptoms, the plenum’s agenda suggested he was willing to go deeper and wider to address the causes of China’s chronic corruption problems, but in his own way.
The political analyst, who asked not to be named as his school required him to seek approval when speaking to media, detailed some of the opportunities for corruption that the country still faced.
“In China, areas like promotion of officials, public projects, military equipment acquisition and natural resources development remain highly lucrative black boxes in which one or a few key persons can dictate the decisions involving billions of dollars, despite the relentless anti-corruption fight,” he said.
“While Western analysts would suggest the scrutiny of the public and the media to be part of the equation, it will not be the party’s priority as Xi firmly believes strengthening the party’s self-governance is sufficient.”
Expected absences
At the 20th party congress in October 2022, 205 full Central Committee members were appointed, along with 171 alternate members. Four years later, the number of empty seats at next week’s conclave could highlight an extraordinary level of attrition.
The anti-corruption campaign has taken a heavy toll on the committee, with 35 of its full members either under investigation or stripped of their seats in the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.
The precedent for mass adjustments was set during last year’s fourth plenum, which confirmed the expulsion of 14 full and alternate members – including former senior generals He Weidong and Miao Hua – and elevated 11 alternates to full membership.
The party is set to appoint a cascade of replacements to the vacant or compromised seats as it deals with the large backlog of the remaining 21 full members and seven alternate members who are facing investigation but are yet to be expelled from the committee.
The vacancies reflect a sprawling anti-corruption and political disciplinary campaign that is cutting across both party and government systems as well as the People’s Liberation Army.
The SCMP’s tally shows that Xi’s anti-corruption machinery clearly accelerated after 2020, when 19 “tigers” or senior officials were caught. The number of top officials facing investigation has been on a rising trend, reaching a new high of 65 last year.
Most officials in the group, supervised directly by the party’s top anti-graft body Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), belonged to a pool of officials known as “centrally managed cadres”, meaning they typically ranked at deputy ministerial level or above.
A smaller number held slightly lower ranks but occupied sensitive positions in important sectors.
Unlike their subordinates, who are managed and supervised by local branches of the party’s organisation and disciplinary agency, senior officials are under the direct management of the Central Organisation Department, its top personnel body.
The Central Committee has yet to confirm the expulsion of a slew of prominent former ministerial and regional chiefs occupying full member seats who were snared in corruption investigations over the past few months or are facing legal procedures.
Among them are Jiangxi’s former party chief Yi Lianhong and provincial governor Ye Jianchun, former Inner Mongolia party secretary Sun Shaocheng and government chief Wang Lixia.
They include Hu Henghua, who was mayor of Chongqing, Lan Tianli, former Guangxi government chairman, Yi Huiman, who chaired China’s securities regulator, and emergency management minister Wang Xiangxi.
Several lower-ranked alternate members are facing investigations but have yet to be formally removed: ex-mayor of Shenzhen Qin Weizhong, as well as the former Xian and Hefei party bosses Fang Hongwei and Fei Gaoyun, respectively, and ex-railway chief Fei Dongbin.
And with just a week to go before the plenum, Xia Maolin, vice mayor of Beijing and an alternate member of the Central Committee, has come under investigation.
Bijie party secretary Wu Shenghua, who was expelled from the party and dismissed from public duties in January, became a target of name-and-shame campaigns in September when Beijing made him an exemplary case of failing to address local government debts incurred by predecessors.
Missing generals
There was even more turbulence in the PLA, where the anti-corruption and political rectification campaign has reached the pinnacle of its command structure, the Central Military Commission (CMC).
The CMC’s former deputy chairman Zhang Youxia and member Liu Zhenli were both accused of severe political disloyalty and factionalism.
A broad swathe of CMC, theatre-command and service-branch chiefs holding Central Committee seats were also implicated. Many were expelled from the national legislature before their term ended, usually a sign of serious career setback.
They included Wang Peng, who was director of the CMC’s training department, its political and legal affairs committee chief Wang Renhua, as well as the head of equipment development Xu Xueqiang.
Logistics Support Department chief Zhang Lin, General Office director Zhong Shaojun and Ju Qiansheng, who commanded the PLA’s Strategic Support Force, were also removed from their positions.
Other senior expulsions included ground forces commander Li Qiaoming and four political commissars: Li Wei, from the information support force, Western Theatre Command’s Li Fengbiao, Zhang Hongbing from the armed police and the air force’s Guo Puxiao.
Wang Kangping, the former commander of the Joint Logistics Support Force who was removed from the national legislature in June, is the only uniformed alternate member waiting for the Central Committee’s decision.
The vanished ones
There are also civilian officials who have disappeared from the public eye without explanation, which could suggest some career hiccups or that they have quietly stepped down from their positions.
Among the most prominent abrupt departures was ex-agriculture minister Han Jun, who was unexpectedly removed from his position in April.
Also noteworthy was the sudden exit of former international liaison department head Liu Jianchao, who vanished from public view following an overseas trip last summer. He was subsequently replaced by Liu Haixing.
Two critical positions bridging Beijing’s military-civilian fusion statecraft were left vacant with the departure of Jin Zhuanglong, former industry and information technology minister, and Lei Fanpei, who chaired state-owned conglomerate China State Shipbuilding Corporation. Beijing has made no announcements about their status.
The replacement dynamic
Under party statutes, vacancies on the Central Committee are filled by alternate members, who are ranked based on votes received at the previous congress.
However, recent sessions indicate that promotions are no longer strictly aligned with the ranking of alternate members and could even become the latest indicator of further downfall.
During last year’s fourth plenum, as alternate members were promoted to fill vacancies, several were bypassed – including Wang Jiayi, Shi Yugang and Fang Hongwei, with the latter subsequently expelled from the party.
Any candidate skipped in the line-up at this year’s event is likely to face intense scrutiny regarding their political standing.
The round of replacements in the previous plenum did not strictly follow the established ranking of alternate members. Instead, four military and three civilian alternate members were “skipped over”.
The military alternates were Wang Liyan, then-deputy commander of PLA Rocket Force, Wang Kangping, who commanded the Joint Logistics Support Force, Fang Yongxiang, ex-head of the CMC’s General Office, and Shi Zhenglu from Northern Theatre Command.
The skipped-over civilian officials were the then deputy education minister Wang Jiayi, former Xian party secretary Fang Hongwei and Shi Yugang, deputy chief of the provincial political advisory body in Yunnan.
Several of the skipped alternate members were later officially confirmed to be facing disciplinary investigations.
Wang Kangping was stripped of his seat in the national legislative body while Xian’s Fang Hongwei was detained by the CCDI just days after the fourth plenum and expelled from the party and public office in July.
Source: South China Morning Post
