The Engine of Absolute Control

Consider the executive committee of China’s military command. The Central Military Commission, structured to function with seven members, has effectively been reduced to a duo: Xi Jinping and his chief disciplinarian, Zhang Shengmin. Five seats lie vacant, cleared out by a relentless disciplinary campaign that recently swallowed top general Zhang Youxia, formerly the second-highest official in the military hierarchy, who was expelled from both the party and the commission.

This shrinkage at the summit of power is not a administrative failure; it is the system operating as intended. As the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee gathers for its fifth plenum, state media confirms that discussions will center on advancing full and rigorous self-governance. In the lexicon of Beijing politics, self-governance is simply a euphemism for absolute discipline, party loyalty, and institutional subordination.

When Xi assumed leadership in 2012, he promised to eradicate corruption across all ranks. Over a decade later, the investigative machinery operates with unabated speed. In the past year alone, disciplinary authorities initiated investigations into more than one million individuals, including over one hundred officials at or above the ministerial and provincial levels. Long-standing political survivors have fallen, including former Xinjiang party leader Ma Xingrui and Huang Qifan, the former mayor of Chongqing who had famously navigated high-profile party scandals a decade ago.

The extraordinary volume of purges reflects a structural reality of autocratic governance. In a centralized system controlling 1.4 billion people, local officials routinely prioritize personal interests over party decrees. Rather than reforming the bureaucratic architecture, Xi has made relentless punishment a permanent method of rule. Within this worldview, material bribery and spiritual corruption—defined as political disloyalty—are treated as identical offenses.

This deliberate blurring of terms ensures that every disciplinary probe double-functions as a political warning. Because investigations almost invariably yield convictions, enforcing administrative integrity and removing potential challengers become indistinguishable. Xi himself previously cautioned that unless the party maintained internal discipline, it could lose its ruling status and inevitably be eliminated by history.

The timing of the current wave of enforcement is strategic. The fifth plenum is the key operational meeting of the current five-year cycle before next year’s 21st Party Congress, where a new Central Committee will be named and Xi is positioned to secure a fourth term. Before the party elite, the message from the top is unmistakable: unity is mandatory, and no rank offers immunity.

Written by Sandy van Dongen sandy.vandongen@alpineweekly.com