What changed
China’s Communist Party expelled 33 members as its four-day fifth plenum ended in Beijing on 29 October 2026, including 16 military figures. Attendance fell to 279 Central Committee members, down from 315 at the previous plenum and 364 at the one before that, marking the first time under Xi Jinping that participation dropped below 300.
Why it matters
The striking change is not just the number of expulsions. It is the scale of turnover around China’s military leadership. Former senior figures including Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were removed, leaving the seven-member Central Military Commission with only Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin. Zhang Shengmin was also promoted to the Politburo.
Xi has made corruption a defining target since taking power in 2012, but the party’s language now reaches further: discipline, ideological loyalty and obedience are treated as part of the same problem. The latest removals bring expulsions during Xi’s third term to 51, while the party’s anti-corruption watchdog says 680,000 people were disciplined in the first nine months of 2026.
The informed reading is that this campaign is also about control. If that continues, senior officials may face greater pressure to demonstrate loyalty, while the military’s leadership will remain under unusually close scrutiny. The specific charges against most of those expelled remain unclear, and it is not established that the purges have impaired military readiness.
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