On October 26, the Fifth Plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) opened. The session, which will run until October 29, appears to be focused primarily on personnel matters and internal party regulations. According to the Xinhua news agency, CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping used the first day of the plenum to provide an explanation of a draft resolution—the meeting’s concluding document—centered on “comprehensively strengthening internal party governance.” Shortly before the plenum, on October 23, Xi convened an unscheduled meeting of the Politburo, where the anti-corruption campaign took center stage. Simultaneously, Qiushi, the CPC’s primary theoretical journal, published a piece featuring previous remarks by Xi on the subject. While the fight against corruption has been a prominent feature of his leadership since 2012, the past year has seen the campaign reach as high as three members of the Politburo.
Of the 205 full members elected to the current Central Committee in 2022, 35 have since come under investigation or been removed from their posts, according to calculations by the South China Morning Post. Many of these cases involved allegations of disloyalty to the party—a charge that, in most instances, should be interpreted not as an attempt at a political conspiracy, but rather as a loss of core values and party spirit. To achieve the established goals of socialist modernization, central authorities must “have the courage” to pursue necessary self-renewal and “self-revolution,” Xinhua reported.
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