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A record 33 members of the Communist Party’s Central Committee were expelled as the fifth plenum wrapped up its four-day closed-door session in Beijing on October 29, 2026, according to a communique released at the gathering’s conclusion. Sixteen of those expelled came from the military, with the remainder drawn from civilian ranks, and all faced accusations of serious disciplinary and legal violations, the party statement said. Attendance at the plenum stood at 279 full members, a sharp drop from 315 at the fourth plenum in October 2025 and 364 at the third in July 2024, a BBC News assessment found. The current Central Committee began its term in 2022 with more than 370 members, figures compiled by the Wall Street Journal show.
The latest expulsions bring the total number of Central Committee members removed during Xi Jinping’s third term to a record 51, compared with 34 in his first term and five in his second, according to data reviewed by BBC News. The Financial Times reported that the communique vowed to relentlessly rectify conduct and enforce discipline while promoting an integrated approach of not daring to be corrupt, not being able to be corrupt and not wanting to be corrupt. Among those confirmed expelled were former vice-chair of the Central Military Commission Zhang Youxia, former Xinjiang party boss Ma Xingrui, ex-technology minister Jin Zhuanglong and former senior diplomat Liu Jianchao, the Financial Times stated.
China’s top anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, reported that 680,000 people across the party apparatus were disciplined in the first nine months of 2026, a figure cited by BBC News. In all of 2025, a record 983,000 individuals faced disciplinary measures including reprimands, suspensions, demotions or expulsion, representing a 10.6 percent increase from the previous year’s already high total, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing official CCDI data. That 2025 figure marked the highest annual total since the party began releasing such statistics about two decades ago, according to the same Wall Street Journal review.
The purges have had a pronounced effect on the People’s Liberation Army, where only two of the original seven members of the Central Military Commission remain, both Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin, multiple outlets including CNN and the Brookings Institution noted. The Asia Society Policy Institute estimated that roughly 77 percent of the original 2022 Central Committee cohort would be in a position to attend this plenum after accounting for removals and investigations, a calculation referenced across several reports including those from Reuters and the Straits Times. Attendance below 300 marked the first such occurrence in Xi’s 14 years in power, BBC News reported.
Observers have noted that Xi Jinping regards corruption as encompassing not only graft but also ideological impurity and disloyalty, a perspective outlined in the BBC News analysis of the plenum. The Central Committee promoted 11 alternate members to full status during the gathering to fill some vacancies, the largest such midterm turnover since 2017, according to the Wall Street Journal. Party authorities have disciplined more than 140,800 people for policy inaction, recklessness or deceit in the January-to-November period of 2025, surpassing the full-year 2024 total, Xinhua News Agency data cited by the Wall Street Journal showed.
The emphasis on discipline at the plenum comes ahead of next year’s party congress, where Xi is expected to secure a fourth term as general secretary, the Financial Times reported. Since taking power in 2012, Xi has used the anti-corruption campaign to purge millions of officials and assert greater control over the bureaucracy and military, a pattern documented across reports from the Wall Street Journal and CNN. The CCDI continues to expand its oversight, with data from 2025 showing investigations into 115 senior officials at provincial or ministerial level, according to statements from the watchdog reported by Channel News Asia.
