Xi Opens Four-Day Party Plenum Pushing Discipline and Loyalty as Purges Thin the Ranks

HONG KONG — China's political leaders and elites began a four-day meeting on Monday to discuss strengthening the ruling Communist Party's discipline, as President Xi Jinping pushes for greater loyalty and reliability from officials and extends his yearslong campaign against corruption.

The closed-door gathering is the fifth plenum of the party's Central Committee. It comes roughly a year before Xi is widely expected to secure a fourth five-year term as party leader, along with personnel changes to key leadership bodies. Xi opened the session with a work report and spoke about a draft policy decision on advancing "full and rigorous party self-governance," according to the state news agency Xinhua. The policy aims to make cadres more disciplined, effective and less corrupt.

Xi's anti-graft drive has defined his rule since he took power in 2012. Purges of officials, including some seen as political rivals, have reached a scale that led critics to argue the campaign also served to consolidate his power. His focus has widened to underperforming cadres. In recent years, the number of officials punished for "formalism" and "bureaucratism," meaning dereliction of duty, inaction and reckless acts that hinder development, has surged.

"The plenum is a chance to ensure the new generations rising the ranks share Xi's assessment of the opportunities and risks China faces," said Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in London. She said the crackdowns are now "less about purging elite rivals and more about building a disciplined system that can sustain Xi's political priorities across leadership cycles." Mingda Qiu, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group, said the message is clear: "The anti-corruption campaign is not winding down. Officials are not only tested for loyalty, but also for compliance and action."

Xi has warned about officials who say one thing and do another. In a January meeting, he said inspections and audits had found failures to comply and improper execution of top-level decisions, according to an October article in the party journal Qiushi. He cautioned against "two-faced people" who profess loyalty but privately defy orders. "During leadership transitions, we must keep our eyes sharp, elevate good cadres who are truly loyal and reliable, consistent in word and deed, and willing to take responsibility, and never allow 'two-faced people' or those driven by self-interest to slip through," he was quoted as saying.

Analysts will be watching the empty seats. Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, and his colleagues Lobsang Tsering and Shengyu Wang noted that Xi's civilian purges are record-breaking, and that 42 of the 44 military-affiliated officials elected as full Central Committee members in 2022 have been purged or have disappeared. The committee began its term in 2022 with more than 370 full and alternate members. Thomas and his colleagues estimated that turnout this week could fall below 80%, potentially the lowest at any plenum since the end of Mao Zedong's rule in 1976.

Thomas also expects tighter scrutiny of public spending and major projects, more use of technology to uncover corruption, and tougher consequences for officials who fail to deliver on Xi's priorities. NPR reported that personnel appointments are possible at the meeting.

For Washington, the practical stakes are indirect but real. A leadership that has pruned its civilian and military ranks and demands unquestioned compliance is one that is less likely to tolerate dissent over strategy, trade or Taiwan, and one whose decisions rest on fewer independent voices. How many seats are filled when the meeting wraps up will offer the first public measure of how deep the purges have gone.