Chinese President Xi Jinping’s decade-long anti-corruption campaign is under renewed scrutiny as the ruling Communist Party’s fifth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee opened this week, with analysts questioning whether the drive targets genuine graft or simply enforces loyalty to the leader.
According to a report by Amy Hawkins in The Guardian, Xi pledged upon taking power in 2012 to stamp out corruption “all through the ranks of the Communist party.” More than a decade later, the pace has not slowed. Last year, China’s disciplinary authorities opened investigations into more than one million people, including more than 100 officials at or above ministerial or provincial level.
The fifth plenum, which began on Monday and is set to focus on “major issues on advancing the party’s full and rigorous self-governance,” has placed discipline and party loyalty high on the agenda. In party-speak, “governance” is widely understood as a byword for discipline, loyalty and anti-corruption. For observers of elite Chinese politics, the apparent lack of discipline appears to dominate discussions as officials gather.
The near-certainty of conviction in such cases has fuelled debate over whether targets are truly corrupt or simply political rivals. Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, told The Guardian that in Xi’s worldview, obsessed with discipline and loyalty, there may be little difference between the two. “If you’re corrupt, you’re not politically loyal. If you’re politically loyal, you’re not corrupt,” Brown said. He added that in the CCP system, “corruption is not just material things” but also “spiritual corruption,” which includes political disloyalty.
Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society thinktank, noted that while Xi has made the party less corrupt and strengthened his control, “he knows that tougher punishment cannot fully resolve the problem of officials putting their own interests ahead of the party’s.” Thomas said Xi’s response is “to keep tightening discipline, making anti-corruption a permanent method of governing with no obvious point at which he can declare the job done.”
The plenum is particularly significant as it is likely the last substantive meeting before next year’s 21st Party Congress, where a new Central Committee will be chosen and Xi is expected to secure a fourth term as CCP head. Xi has previously warned that the party could “lose its ruling status and inevitably be eliminated by history” if it failed to get its house in order. “This is by no means an exaggeration,” he said.
The focus comes amid high-profile cases, including the investigation in January of Zhang Youxia, China’s top general and a man second only to Xi in the military hierarchy. Zhang was expelled from the party last month after already being removed from the Central Military Commission (CMC). A series of other purges has reduced the CMC, which normally has seven members, to just two: Xi and Zhang Shengmin, the CMC’s head of discipline. Other recent targets include Ma Xingrui, the former party secretary for Xinjiang, and Huang Qifan, the former mayor of Chongqing.
Some analysts have asked whether the reach of the purges into the highest echelons signals instability. The Guardian reported that Xi likely sees it differently: corruption investigations demonstrate who is in charge, and Brown described them as “the most easy and natural tool by which to enforce unity and discipline.”
