China's Communist Party expels 33 Central Committee members at once, the largest purge of Xi's rule

The empty chairs told the story before the communique did. The Chinese Communist Party ended its fifth plenum, a four day closed door meeting in Beijing, by confirming the expulsion of 33 Central Committee members for what the party calls grave violations of discipline and the law. It is the largest single purge at a plenum since the Mao era.

Sixteen of the 33 were military figures. The biggest name is Zhang Youxia, formerly the country's top uniformed commander and a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the body that commands the armed forces. The list also includes Ma Xingrui, a former Politburo member who ran Xinjiang, former senior diplomat Liu Jianchao, former industry minister Jin Zhuanglong, and Yi Huiman, the former chairman of the securities regulator. Senior figures from the military industrial sector were expelled as well, among them former heads of the state nuclear, shipbuilding and aerospace corporations.

Attendance at the plenum was 279 members, full and alternate, against the 376 named when this Central Committee took office in 2022 and 315 at the fourth plenum a year ago. More than a quarter of the original committee did not sit in the room. Not every absence is a purge, but the direction is plain, and the totals are now on the record. The latest expulsions bring the number of Central Committee members removed during Xi's third term to 51, against 35 in his second term and five in his first. The party's anti corruption watchdog says about 680,000 people across the party were disciplined in the first nine months of this year alone.

The military command structure is the thinnest part of the picture. The Central Military Commission has seven seats. It currently has two active members, Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin, the general who runs discipline inspection inside the armed forces. No replacements were appointed at the plenum for the commanders already removed. Zhang Shengmin was instead elevated into the Politburo, which now sits at 22 members against its usual 25. Analysts quoted in the coverage suggest the vacancies may stay open until the party's 21st National Congress, which the plenum set for the second half of 2027, the meeting at which Xi is expected to seek a fourth term.

Beijing presents the campaign as discipline. Xi has called corruption the biggest threat to the party since he took power in 2012, and the plenum communique promised comprehensive and rigorous party governance. What the numbers also show is a ruling party removing its own senior ranks, including the commanders of the military it may one day order into a crisis over Taiwan, faster than it replaces them. No specific charges against most of the expelled men have been published beyond the discipline formula, and none of the proceedings were open.