Xi Jinping removes 33 senior officials from the Communist Party of China

The purge of senior figures in the Communist Party of China continued under Xi Jinping: 33 senior officials were removed during the Fifth Plenum of the Central Committee, which concluded on Thursday.

This is a record number. According to the Guardian, only 279 full and alternate members of the Central Committee attended the meeting, out of the 376 elected in 2022. The many vacant seats reflect purges carried out in recent years within the party and the Chinese armed forces.

More than a quarter of the original members were absent, in many cases as a result of these purges. The number of vacant seats was the highest recorded at a Central Committee plenary session in modern Chinese history, illustrating the scale of the reshaping of the party and military leadership under Xi Jinping.

Officials confirmed to have been removed included Zhang Yuxia, formerly the second-in-command of China’s military leadership after Xi Jinping, and Ma Xingrui, former Communist Party secretary in the Xinjiang region. No official explanation was given for the absence of other officials.

Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society think tank, wrote on the X platform that the large number of vacant seats showed that the plenary session focused on Xi’s vision of strict internal discipline.