Xi Leads Four-Day Session

President Xi Jinping opened a four-day closed-door session on Monday to tighten control within the ruling Communist Party.

Approximately 300 members of the party's Central Committee are attending the fifth plenum in Beijing. The gathering focuses on strengthening internal discipline and ensuring loyalty among officials. This timing places the meeting roughly one year before Xi is widely expected to secure a fourth five-year term as party leader. It also precedes anticipated personnel shifts in key leadership bodies.

Xi has spent the last 14 years leading an anticorruption campaign that removed thousands of officials, including dozens of committee members. In a speech published by state media in January, he criticized cadres for being politically opportunistic and inwardly resistant to directives. Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, told The Associated Press that the plenum serves to align new generations of leaders with Xi's view of China's risks and opportunities.

According to Xinhua news agency, the committee will review a draft policy decision on advancing full and rigorous party self-governance. The goal is to create a more disciplined and effective cadre system. Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, expects the session to call for closer scrutiny of public spending and major projects. He also predicts a wider use of technology to detect corruption and tougher consequences for underperforming officials.

The anticorruption drive has thinned the ranks of the Central Committee. Eight seats are currently vacant, and 15 members are under investigation with potential replacement looming. This makes the current plenum the lowest turnout for the body since the death of former leader Mao Zedong in 1976. The purge has also extended to the military, removing five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission. The plenum may bring new appointments to that commission or restructure party control over the armed forces.

The discussions occur against a backdrop of economic strain. China's second-largest global economy faces persistently weak domestic spending and a prolonged crisis in the property sector. Turbulent political and economic relations with the United States continue to weigh on the nation's leaders as they navigate these internal and external pressures.