Xi Jinping puts party discipline in focus at China's fifth plenum

On Monday, China's President Xi Jinping opened a key meeting of Communist Party elites in Beijing, which is being closely watched for what it could mean for the country's future and the direction of the party's leadership.

The “fifth plenum” began against a backdrop of years of purges, and with an unusual agenda. Traditionally focused on China's next five-year economic and social development plan, this year's meeting has shifted its attention to party discipline, self-governance and anti-corruption.

The four-day meeting, which ends on Thursday, comes at a crucial time. After all, the Communist Party is just a year away from its next national congress, where Xi is widely expected to secure a fourth term as party leader.

The closed-door gathering is taking place in Beijing, with officials expected to consider stricter rules for scrutinising party members and strengthening control over the party's vast bureaucracy.

What is the plenum and why is it important?

William Zheng, Senior China Correspondent at the South China Morning Post, explained that ‘plenum’ in China is basically a shortened form of the plenary sessions of the ruling Communist Party.

“In Chinese it (plenum) is called 'quan hui' or 'zhong quan hui' which basically means full member meeting, where all the party’s central committee - which is the top decision making body of the ruling party - shall attend this meeting to decide on top personnel, policy decision and deal with all critical matters for coming years,” he said in a video report.

The fifth plenum is the fifth of seven gatherings that normally take place in every five-year cycle between CCP congresses. The plenums bring together more than 300 full and alternate members of the CCP's Central Committee, comprising some of the most senior officials in the party hierarchy.

Traditionally, the fifth plenum focuses on China's next five-year economic and social development plan. But this time, the sequence has changed.

The fourth plenum in October 2025 had already adopted recommendations for China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030), a task usually reserved for the fifth gathering. Instead, this week's meeting will focus on strengthening party governance and discipline.

The shift comes as Xi seeks to tighten control over the party's vast bureaucracy, with questions growing over whether officials are effectively carrying out Beijing's policies.

The meeting could also set the political tone ahead of the party's leadership reshuffle in 2027, when Xi is expected to secure another term. However, further plenums could still take place before the next Party Congress.

According to experts, Xi is also using this meeting to send a message to the Western world.

Jon Czin, a fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, said Xi wants to draw a contrast between the “chaos in the West”, from protests in France to the political tumult in the US, and China's stability and growth.

“They are saying they are on the right trajectory, advancing and that is increasingly to frontier on key technologies like AI,” he said in an interview with Sally Sara for Radio National Breakfast on ABC Listen.

Czin, a former China expert at the CIA and former director for China at the US National Security Council under President Joe Biden, said that unfortunately, some of this is true.

“But it masks some of the real downsides of what Xi Jinping has dealt during his tenure because a lot of that advancement and resilience they built into their system to deal with the trade war and fall out of the Iran war its has really come at the cost of their everyday economy. Youth unemployment is at somewhere around 20% and has been for a couple of years now. The property sector has been in collapse for the last 6 years and has still not found the bottom yet,” he said.

He added that while China looks formidable to the US at a national level, the picture is quite different when one looks at the everyday lives of its people and the grim state of local economies.

Corruption and purges

Xi is constantly on the lookout for officials who are loyal to the party, free of corruption and willing to show initiative, but who are also obedient to his directions

Another important pillar of the plenum's agenda is the anti-corruption drive that Xi Jinping has pursued for more than a decade.

Xi is constantly on the lookout for officials who are loyal to the party, free of corruption and willing to show initiative, but who are also obedient to his directions. The purges have hit both civilian and military ranks alike.

But Beijing's push for tighter discipline goes beyond corruption. It also targets officials who fail to implement policies, waste public resources or avoid taking responsibility. The challenge for Xi is to ensure officials follow the party's directions while still showing enough initiative to deal with problems on the ground.

So it is not surprising that The New York Times reported on how the number of officials has been falling with every new purge:

“The current Central Committee had 376 members when it formed at the last party congress in 2022. But Mr. Xi’s purges have taken a toll. At the committee meeting last year, attendance was down to 315 officials, and the number this week could fall to around 300 or fewer, given the officials who have been expelled, investigated or disappeared.”

The report also quoted Xi's speech, in which he said too many officials fail to faithfully implement orders and instead feign obedience.

Likening corrupt officials to diseased trees, he said the party should “pull out the sick trees that should be pulled out, chop down the ones that should be chopped down.”

And the campaign of “self-revolution” is not slowing down.

In 2023, inspectors punished 49 officials in provincial or ministerial-level posts and 24,000 in county-level posts. Last year, the corresponding numbers were 69 and 35,000, according to official statistics.

Xi's purges have lately been most intense in the military. Earlier this year, China's top general, Zhang Youxia, was detained and accused of corruption and disloyalty.

Since 2022, around 100 senior officers have been placed under investigation or have simply disappeared, likely while under investigation.

Experts have pointed out that many within the party and outside it are beginning to question whether these purges are now more about keeping officials on their toes than tackling corruption.

Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London, explained to The Guardian that in Xi's worldview, which is obsessed with discipline and loyalty, there may not be much difference between the two.

“If you’re corrupt, you’re not politically loyal. If you’re politically loyal, you’re not corrupt,” Brown said.

He added that in the CCP system, “corruption is not just material things”, but also “spiritual corruption”, which includes political disloyalty.

Devendra Kumar, Associate Fellow at Shiv Nadar University's Centre for Himalayan Studies, said the plenum could also offer an indication of Xi's intentions behind the purges.

Speaking in a Taiwan Talks episode titled China's Military Doctrine Shift, 'Persistent Struggle' and Loyalty Tests at Fifth Plenum, Kumar said:

“The personnel changes and shuffles will be on radar but what to look out for is that Xi will seek to get endorsement for his decades long anti-corruption campaign. These have led to some rumbling in the party about Xi’s intention,” he said.

What to look out for once the plenum ends?

Experts say the plenum will set the tone for the kind of officials Xi will now bring into the party's leadership, and how he balances party loyalty, corruption, accountability and the need to grow the local economy.

Much of what happens behind the closed doors of the plenum will remain unknown until the official communiqué is released at the end of the meeting on Thursday, 29 October.

Attention will be on whether the party announces new mechanisms to monitor officials, how it deals with vacancies created by the purges, and whether there are any signals about the leadership ahead of next year's Party Congress.

A more detailed document outlining the decisions is also expected to follow in the days after the meeting.

Chong Ja Ian, Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore, told the South China Morning Post that while Xi prefers greater control, he also wants his officials to have flexibility and show initiative. This creates a conundrum: how can officials do both?

“Xi wants officials to be politically reliable, take initiative and get things done on the ground.”

He added that with the country's economic woes, Xi appears to believe that if officials listen to him, things will work out better.

“What to look out for when this meeting wraps up is, what the top leadership of the party look like? With all the purges and vacancies, the question is how will he fill them up,” Ian wondered.

He also questioned whether the party would renew itself along the lines of the Brezhnev era in the Soviet Union, when older officials were replaced by other older officials who were loyal to the party but showed little initiative.

“Or will Xi bring younger officials who will bring more energy and initiative in their work,” he said.

-Asia Media Centre

 Banner Image - A file photo of 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Photo: Wikimedia