Xi's Anti-Corruption Drive Takes Center Stage as China's Top Leaders Gather for Fifth Plenum

China's Communist Party leadership is preparing to convene a major meeting this week, with discipline and party loyalty expected to be at the top of the agenda. The gathering, known as the fifth plenum, begins on Monday and will focus on what Chinese state media describes as "major issues on advancing the party's full and rigorous self-governance."

In party language, "governance" is shorthand for discipline, loyalty and the fight against corruption. Analysts who follow elite Chinese politics say worry over a perceived lack of discipline is shaping discussions within the party.

When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he promised to root out corruption at every level of the party. More than a decade on, the campaign shows no sign of slowing. Last year, China's disciplinary authorities opened investigations into more than 1 million people, among them more than 100 officials at or above the ministerial or provincial level.

Because such investigations almost always end in conviction, questions persist over whether those targeted are truly guilty or are simply rivals of the people in charge. Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London, suggested that in Xi's worldview the two may be hard to separate. "If you're corrupt, you're not politically loyal. If you're politically loyal, you're not corrupt," he said. Brown added that within the party system, corruption extends beyond material gain to include "spiritual corruption," which covers political disloyalty.

Some analysts say the campaign endures because corruption is a feature of a top-down authoritarian system with a vast bureaucracy governing 1.4 billion people. Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society thinktank, said Xi has made the party less corrupt and strengthened his control, but knows harsher punishment cannot fully stop officials from putting their own interests ahead of the party's. In Thomas's view, Xi's answer is to keep tightening discipline, turning anti-corruption into a permanent method of governing with no obvious point at which the job can be declared finished.

The plenum is the fifth of seven meetings that normally take place in each five-year cycle between party congresses. It brings together more than 300 members of the Central Committee, the most senior officials in the party hierarchy. This one carries extra weight because it is likely to be the last substantive meeting before next year's 21st Party Congress, where a new Central Committee will be chosen and Xi is expected to secure a fourth term as party head.

The focus on governance comes amid a series of high-profile investigations of senior party and military figures. In January, Zhang Youxia, China's top general and second only to Xi in the military hierarchy, was placed under investigation. He was expelled from the party last month, having already been removed from the Central Military Commission. After a string of other purges, the commission, which normally has seven members, is down to two: Xi and Zhang Shengmin, its head of discipline.

Other recent targets include Ma Xingrui, the former party secretary for Xinjiang, and Huang Qifan, the former mayor of Chongqing. Huang had long been regarded as a political survivor, having come through the early 2010s scandal in which Xi's rival Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing party boss, was implicated in the death of British businessman Neil Heywood. Bo was convicted of bribery and embezzlement and is serving a life sentence, while Huang escaped that fate until now.

Some analysts have asked whether purges reaching the top of the party and military point to instability in the regime. Xi probably sees it differently, Brown suggested. Corruption investigations show who is in charge, and they are "the most easy and natural tool by which to enforce unity and discipline."