Xi Jinping’s purges hollow out the Communist Party of China

By Tom Beckwith · Reporting from Washington · October 26, 2026

By using the fifth plenum to make anti-corruption a permanent instrument of rule, Xi Jinping trades professional competence for obedience as domestic spending remains sluggish.

Xi Jinping is making a fundamental mistake. He has confused the silence of a terrified bureaucracy with the stability of a loyal one. By turning the fight against corruption into a permanent instrument of rule, he is not cleaning the party. He is hollowing it out. He has traded the competence of professional cadres for the obedience of survivors.

The architecture of fear

The fifth plenum began on Monday, October 26, 2026, in Beijing. According to The Guardian, the gathering focuses on "major issues on advancing the party’s full and rigorous self-governance." This is the language of the internal audit. It is the language of the purge.

The scale of the operation is staggering. Chinese disciplinary authorities opened investigations into more than 1 million people.

The campaign does not spare the top. More than 100 officials at or above ministerial or provincial level were investigated.

The plenum includes more than 300 members of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee. It is likely the last substantive meeting before the 21st Party Congress.

The fifth plenum is the fifth of seven gatherings that occur in every cycle. It serves as the final tuning of the instrument before the leadership reshuffle.

He is expected to be anointed for a fourth term as head of the party.

He has conducted a 14-year anti-corruption campaign. This drive has purged thousands of officials.

The logic is simple and brutal. Kerry Brown of the Lau China Institute notes that in this system, corruption is not just about money. It is about "spiritual corruption," which includes political disloyalty.

This is the institutionalization of the Sky Net operation. What began as a hunt for fugitives has become a permanent method of governing.

A military of two

The most dangerous vacuum exists in the military. The Central Military Commission normally has seven members. It currently consists of two: Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin.

Zhang Shengmin is the head of discipline. This is a telling arrangement. The commander-in-chief has removed the generals and kept the policeman.

Free Malaysia Today reports that five CMC members have been toppled.

The purge of the high command is absolute. The Asia Society Policy Institute found that only two of the 44 military members appointed to the Central Committee in 2022 have not been purged or disappeared.

This is the Yezhovshchina of the twenty-first century. The mechanism is the same: the use of systemic political purges and show trials to remove suspected dissenters and consolidate absolute leadership control.

The cost is professional competence. Zhang Youxia, the top general, was placed under investigation in January 2026.

He was removed from the CMC and expelled from the party in September 2026.

The result is a leadership void. The plenum is expected to have the lowest turnout since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.

Eight seats on the Central Committee are currently vacant.

Fifteen Central Committee members are under investigation and at risk of replacement.

The party is no longer a governing body. It is a list of people waiting to be erased.

The theater of governance

Xi Jinping warns that the party could "lose its ruling status and inevitably be eliminated by history." He insists this is "by no means an exaggeration."

He rails against "two-faced" officials. These are the men who obey in appearance but "inwardly resist."

This internal terror is a reaction to external failure. China is facing a protracted crisis in the property sector. Domestic spending is sluggish.

The regime uses the Bo Xilai trial as a blueprint. It removes rivals by labeling them corrupt.

Yet, while the house is being gutted, Beijing projects a facade of grand strategy. Ukrinform reports that the Kremlin is preparing for a trilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Xi Jinping.

This is the classic Leninist maneuver. Beijing uses external diplomacy to signal that the leader is invulnerable.

The party comprises more than 100 million members. The goal has been to ensure every one of them fears the center.

Infobae notes that disciplinary bodies sanctioned 412,000 people during the first half of 2026.

Of those, 74 held provincial or ministerial rank.

The state is becoming a shell. It can execute orders, but it can no longer provide honest feedback.

The trilateral summit is theater. The real story is the empty chairs at the CMC.

Xi Jinping has succeeded in making himself the only person in the room. The problem is that he is now the only person responsible for every failure.

Xi Jinping will use the conclusions of the fifth plenum and the upcoming 21st Party Congress to permanently institutionalize the truncation of the Central Military Commission. He will leave the body reduced to a loyalist core rather than restoring its traditional balance. This is the total subordination of the military to personal authority at the cost of operational depth. He is trading the ability to fight a war for the certainty that no one will start a coup. In five years, Beijing will find that a military of loyalists is not the same as a military of professionals. He has built a regime that is perfectly obedient and completely brittle.

Xi Jinping’s purges hollow out the Communist Party of China

The architecture of fear

A military of two

The theater of governance

Sources