China says party has eliminated serious hidden dangers after record 33 expulsions, officials tell plenum briefing
Senior Chinese officials said on Friday that the Communist Party had eliminated serious hidden dangers within the party, state and military, a day after a four-day plenum confirmed the expulsion of a record 33 senior figures, and put the number punished since 2012 at 7.9 million.
China's ruling Communist Party has eliminated serious hidden dangers within the party, the state and the military under President Xi Jinping, a senior discipline official said on Friday, a day after a four-day plenum confirmed the expulsion of a record 33 senior figures from the party.
Zhang Fuhai, deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, made the claim at a press briefing in Beijing called to explain the decisions of the fifth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee, which ended on Thursday. He said the Central Committee, with Xi at its core, had acted on a sense of mission that the party would rather offend thousands than let down 1.4 billion people, referring to China's population.
The briefing was the party's first detailed public explanation of a plenum that has thinned its own leadership ranks to an unusual degree. State media confirmed on Thursday that 33 more dignitaries had been ejected, including former Politburo member Zhang Youxia, once China's highest-ranking general, who had been removed from his post after a months-long graft investigation. Another expelled figure was Ma Xingrui, a former senior official in Xinjiang who had already been removed from all his posts over corruption allegations.
The scale of the wider campaign was set out in numbers that are hard to grasp at a glance. Zhang said disciplinary and supervisory agencies had opened 8.105 million cases and punished 7.922 million people since the party's 18th National Congress in 2012, when Xi became its leader. Those punished included 963 senior officials under the direct management of the party's central leadership, a figure that shows the campaign has reached the very top of the system as well as its lower levels.
At the same time, officials acknowledged that the problem has not been solved. Zhang told reporters that problems of misconduct and breaches of discipline remain persistent, entrenched and recurring, and that the anti-graft fight remains grave and complex, with much still to be done to eliminate the conditions that give rise to corruption. The plenum's resolution, on advancing full and rigorous governance of the party, is presented as the framework for that next phase.
That resolution was described by Tang Fangyu, head of the Policy Research Office of the Central Committee, as the most important outcome of the plenum. It sets out four areas of focus: maintaining a tough stance against corruption, strengthening checks on and oversight of the exercise of power, fortifying the cultural and ethical foundations for championing integrity and disdaining graft, and enhancing coordinated efforts to ensure officials do not have the audacity, opportunity or desire to commit corruption.
The personnel consequences of the plenum go beyond the expulsions. The gathering also promoted the remaining general serving on the commission that oversees China's military to the Politburo, while leaving the seven-member Central Military Commission with only two active members, Xi and Zhang Shengmin, and the Politburo itself incomplete at 22 of its usual 25 members. No new military commission members were appointed to replace those removed, a gap analysts say could remain until the 21st Party Congress in the second half of 2027.
That congress is now the next fixed point in China's political calendar. The plenum formally set it for the second half of 2027, effectively starting proceedings for the twice-a-decade reshuffle at which Xi is expected to extend his rule for another five-year term. The attendance figures from this week's meeting already hint at the scale of change: 279 full and alternate members attended, compared with 376 originally named in 2022, the highest absence rate in the post-Mao era according to the official summary.
The campaign's reach into the military and defence industry was a recurring theme in Friday's coverage. Among those expelled were figures from aerospace, shipbuilding and nuclear enterprises who had disappeared from public view for extended periods, including former heads of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation and the China National Nuclear Corporation. Their removal suggests the discipline drive is not confined to civilian administration or to the armed forces alone, but spans the industrial base that supports both.
For outside observers, the briefing leaves two readings open. One is that the party is consolidating control ahead of a leadership transition, using discipline as both a genuine anti-corruption tool and a mechanism for removing potential rivals. The other is that the sheer volume of cases, nearly eight million people punished in fourteen years, points to a system in which corruption is deeply embedded and requires constant enforcement rather than a single purge. Friday's officials insisted the campaign will intensify, not wind down, and the test of that promise will be visible in the months before the 2027 congress, when new appointments, and any further expulsions, will show whether the plenum's resolution was a turning point or another chapter in a long-running drive.
