The Chinese Communist Party issued a communiqué on Thursday that announced even more high-ranking military officers and members of the defense industry are under investigation for corruption.
Several top generals have been purged over the past few months, including Gen. Zhang Youxia, whose rank was second only to that of dictator Xi Jinping. The last round of purges left the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the Chinese Communist Party with five of its seven seats empty.
The Party held the fifth plenum of its 20th Party Congress this week, meaning the fifth time party leadership has assembled since the last major Party Congress was held in 2022.
The Chinese Communist Party holds a congress every five years to reshuffle its leadership. The next Congress will be held in the fall of 2027, at which time Xi is expected to extend his open-ended leadership for another five years.
The fifth plenum featured a bumper crop of empty seats, as the Party expelled a record number of its senior officials. In fact, the meeting this week had the highest absence rate since the days of Party founder Mao Zedong, who was notorious for his constant sackings of perceived rivals. Mao was also the only leader of Communist China to hold power for more than four terms, a threshold Xi will cross at the next Party Congress.
The 20th Congress in 2022 named 376 top leaders – but only 279 of them were in attendance when the plenum began on Sunday. More than a quarter of the leaders from 2022 were gone, many of them due to corruption investigations.
The communiqué issued on Thursday announced 33 more full and alternate members of the Central Committee were expelled, 16 of them senior generals in the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Two of those generals were the last two directors of the CMC General Office, Lt. Gen. Zhong Shaojun and Lt. Gen. Fang Yongxiang. Both generals were decorated veterans who fought in China's war against Vietnam in the late 1970s.
Zhong had been a close political ally of Xi for the past 25 years, and was his top lieutenant in the PLA for much of that time. He rose to General Office director in 2017 – and then fell from grace in 2024, losing his director's perch to Fang, who suddenly vanished in turn during the fourth plenum last October. Both Zhong and Fang were accused of "disciplinary violations" and formally drummed out of the Chinese Communist Party this week.
Several of the other generals purged this week were theater commanders with direct supervision of China's military operations. Most of them either skipped the fourth plenum or dropped out of the public eye over the past year.
Also purged were several key officials in China's military-industrial complex, including four heads of important state-owned aerospace and shipbuilding corporations.
One official who had a good time at the fifth plenum was Zhang Shengmin, the only remaining member of the CMC besides Xi. Zhang was promoted to the Politburo, the 21-member executive committee of the Chinese Communist Party. He is currently the only serving member of the PLA to sit on the Politburo.
The communiqué from the plenum strove to present the remarkable number of purges as a sign of strength, rather than weakness, crediting Xi and other Party leaders with "enormous political courage and a strong sense of responsibility" as they resolutely eliminated "serious hidden dangers" in China's military hierarchy.
Rather than focusing on the startling number of its high officials who have been accused of corruption, the communiqué said the "achievements" of the current Congress would be "recorded forever in the history books of building Marxist political parties."
The Party even hinted that more seats could be emptied, as it fought a relentless battle against corruption and tackled other "major challenges."
The BBC quoted China's top anti-corruption agency stating that 680,000 Party officials at all levels have been "disciplined" so far this year.
Analysts told the BBC that Xi is probably cleaning house before the next Party Congress, to ensure that no threat to his personal power remains before he claims a fourth term, and because he wants younger, more "technocratic" leaders to guide the modernization of the PLA.
"Xi’s focus is further consolidating power around himself," said Chong Ja Ian of Carnegie China. "The readout from the plenum suggests he intends to be at the center of China and the Communist Party for the foreseeable future."
"However, further down the road, such concentration of power may pave the way for a more serious power vacuum when Xi ages and slows down," Chong added. Xi is currently 73 years old, which means he would be 79 when his prospective fourth term concludes.
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