Xi Jinping has carried out the largest purge of officials from China‘s Communist Party in a bid to toughen internal discipline.
The removal of 33 members meant that the CCP saw more empty seats than ever before at its annual meeting, underscoring the scale of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.
The party said it had ‘squarely confronted the grim reality that party leadership had at times weakened or hollowed out’ and that it will continue to ‘enforce strict party self-governance, including turning the knife inwards to… curb disorder’.
It is unclear what charges some of the ousted members face beyond ‘serious disciplinary and legal violations.’
In total, 279 full and alternate members of the leadership body attended the gathering this week, compared with the 376 originally named in 2022, according to a summary of the proceedings dispatched by the official Xinhua news agency.
This means more than a quarter of the original cohort was absent, many of them due to purges.
President Xi Jinping speaks at the fifth plenary session of the 20th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee held in Beijing, Thursday, October 29, 2026
