Xi’s anti-graft campaign now also targets underperforming officials, analysts say
China’s Communist Party adopted a resolution on strengthening self-governance, discipline and anti-corruption during a four-day closed-door meeting at which top leaders deliberated on and adopted resolutions that will guide the party in the coming years. The party said in a summary of the resolution that the tasks facing it were “increasingly arduous,” such as “uniting and leading the people to safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests.”
The party said it must step up its self-governance, which involves rooting out corruption and maintaining ideological purity. The party should, “with an eye on enhancing its long-term governance capacity, maintain its progressive nature and purity, and its close, flesh-and-blood ties with the people,” according to a summary of the resolution from the official Xinhua News Agency.
President Xi Jinping has championed anti-corruption since coming to power in 2012 and has sustained a disciplinary enforcement campaign against officials for more than a decade. Analysts say the focus now also includes underperforming officials.
The meeting came about a year before Xi is widely expected to secure his fourth five-year term as the party’s leader. It also elected Gen. Zhang Shengmin, who serves as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, to the Politburo. Xi had earlier removed two of China’s top generals, leaving Zhang as the commission’s only member besides Xi and leaving the Politburo without any representatives from the People’s Liberation Army.
Zhang also holds a position overseeing internal discipline for the military, serving as deputy secretary of the CMC Commission for Discipline Inspection.
Party members also reviewed the earlier removals of top party members and military officials, confirming the personnel changes.
The plenum revealed wider-than-expected purges, according to analysis by Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at Asia Policy who studies Chinese politics. Thomas calculated an attendance rate of 74 percent, the lowest since the times of former leader Mao Zedong, who ran political purges regularly.