China’s Communist Party expels 33 officials in post-Mao era record purge

China’s Communist Party confirmed a wave of expulsions of senior officials ​and unexpectedly elevated top general Zhang Shengmin ‌to the elite Politburo this week, during a four-day conclave focused on tightening internal discipline. The gathering, the party’s “Fifth ​Plenum” since the current leadership cohort was formed ​in 2022, also set the 21st Party ⁠Congress for the second half of 2027 in ​Beijing, effectively opening China’s tightly choreographed, twice-a-decade contest ​for top leadership posts. The meeting of the party’s Central Committee, the largest of its top decision-making bodies, saw the highest ​rate of absences in the post-Mao era, ​underscoring the scale of President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign and ‌wider ⁠political shake-up. In total, 279 full and alternate members of the leadership body attended the gathering this week, compared with the 376 originally named in 2022, ​a summary ​of the ⁠proceedings dispatched by the official Xinhua news agency showed. This means over a ​quarter of the original cohort was ​absent, many ⁠of them due to purges. The plenum formally confirmed the expulsion of 33 officials from the party, ⁠including ​former Politburo members Ma Xingrui and ​Zhang Youxia, former senior diplomat Liu Jianchao and former industry ​minister Jin Zhuanglong.