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With the Fifth Plenum, Xi is preparing to consolidate his power within the Party
After four days behind closed doors, the statement confirms the record number of purges in his anti-corruption campaign and effectively marks the start of a reshuffle of the Chinese leadership: 33 members expelled, including some of his closest allies, 16 of whom were from the military. And now the leader wants to tighten his grip with ‘complete and rigorous self-governance’.
Photo: LaPresse
The fifth plenary session of the Chinese Communist Party, which opened on Monday and closed on Thursday, served as an opportunity for Xi Jinping to lay the groundwork for the next Party Congress, due to be held in mid-2027, at which the leader aims to secure his fourth five-year term. After four days behind closed doors, the communiqué published yesterday confirms the record number of purges in his anti-corruption campaign and effectively marks the start of a reshuffle of the Chinese leadership: 33 members have been expelled, including some of his closest allies, with 16 coming from the military. The list also includes Zhang Youxia, Xi’s former second-in-command in the military hierarchy, and Ma Xingrui, former Party secretary for Xinjiang.
What immediately caught the experts’ eye in the published photographs were the rows of empty chairs: around a quarter of the 376 members of the Central Committee in office at the start of their term, four years ago, did not attend – the lowest turnout at a Party decision-making meeting since the time of Mao Zedong. Many of those absent have been removed; the Central Military Commission has now been all but dismantled, with five of the seven members appointed in 2022 having been purged: only Xi and Vice-Chairman Zhang Shengmin, the Army’s anti-corruption chief who has been promoted to the Politburo, remain. The others live in a climate of fear, reluctant to make decisions and focused above all on not upsetting Beijing. For Xi, his grip on the Party is never firm enough. The leader wants to strengthen his control through ‘comprehensive and rigorous self-governance’, and it has emerged from the plenum that the leadership has on several occasions felt ‘weakened or hollowed out’. The Party must do more to train capable and zealous cadres and ensure that officials ‘do not dare, are unable and have no desire to be corrupt’. After years of purges, Xi admits that the fight against corruption and bureaucratic decay remains a complex and serious challenge, and in the plenum’s communiqué he promises to press ahead with determination to eliminate “serious hidden dangers”, if necessary even “turning the blade inwards to stem the disorder”.