The Shrinking Assembly: Xi Jinping’s Endless Cleansing of the Party

The empty chairs in Beijing tell a far clearer story than the official communiques. As the Chinese Communist Party wrapped up its fifth plenum, the central assembly hall looked noticeably sparser—a stark visual metaphor for a regime consuming its own apparatus in the pursuit of political hygiene.

Attendance dropped to just 279 Central Committee members, a fourteen-year low for a body that began its term in 2022 with more than 370 representatives. The reason for these vacant red seats is straightforward: a record 33 members were expelled at this single four-day gathering, bringing the total number of high-level removals during Xi Jinping’s third term to 51. By comparison, his first two terms saw 35 and five expulsions respectively.

Nearly half of the latest casualties hail from the military establishment. Broad allegations of disciplinary violations mask what has fundamentally become a continuous loyalty test. High-ranking figures such as former Xinjiang party chief Ma Xingrui and top generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli have been discarded. Even the powerful Central Military Commission has seen its seven-member body pared down to just two: Xi himself and his newly elevated vice-chairman, Zhang Shengmin.

In a rare public admission, the party acknowledged in its official communique that it has squarely confronted the grim reality that party leadership had at times weakened or hollowed out, declaring its intent to enforce strict party self-governance, including turning the knife inwards to... curb disorder. That internal blade is moving with remarkable speed. Anti-corruption watchdogs report that 680,000 cadres across the party apparatus were disciplined in the first nine months of this year alone.

What Beijing labels as an anti-corruption campaign is less about graft and more about the absolute elimination of ideological impurity and lukewarm devotion. With the 2027 Party Congress on the horizon, where Xi is expected to secure an unprecedented fourth term, the tolerance for officials who profess loyalty while guarding their own interests has reached zero.

The immediate outcome is a supreme leader standing almost alone atop a cautious, frightened bureaucracy. Yet as the Politburo shrinks and former inner-circle allies vanish without trace, a structural flaw emerges: an elite political system that values obedience over competence risks paralyzing the very machine it seeks to command.

Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com