Last week Beijing’s deputy mayor was meeting with Walmart CEO John Furner and encouraging American companies to invest in the Chinese capital. Now he has vanished from public life, the latest to be swept up in an anti-corruption campaign that has ensnared a galaxy of China’s talent: a former top judge, a spy chief, dozens of military generals – and even officials tasked with rooting out graft in the People’s Republic.
In hushed tones across China party officials are wondering who is next, as the purge continues to reach into the highest echelons of the ruling Communist Party and has even toppled those seen as being close to leader Xi Jinping.
The only person who doesn’t need to worry about their future is Xi himself.
Unlike US President Donald Trump , who is currently battling to save his party’s fortunes at the midterm elections and is constitutionally barred from serving more than two terms, Xi’s rule over the aspiring superpower and world’s second-biggest economy has never looked more secure.
He will take that confidence into a high-level closed-door meeting of more than 200 of the party elite in Beijing this week that is all set to further boost his authority – and his signature anti-corruption drive. Attendance at this meeting will be at a historic low – because of the anti-corruption measure.
The meeting is being particularly closely watched because it is held just a year before an even more important gathering of Communist Party leadership next fall where Xi is expected to engineer for himself an unprecedented fourth term.
The years-long anti-corruption campaign has ensured there are few, if any, figures or factions who could stand against him.
Since Xi, 73, came to power over 14 years ago millions of rank-and-file officials have been purged. In 2022, Xi called to “turn the blade inward” to investigate those tasked to enforce discipline themselves.
Earlier this year he told party cadres that the corruption problem “remains grave” and warned that there were still many “two-faced people” in the party. The war against graft, he promised, would be a “never-ending struggle.”
In recent months, the speed and scale of the anti-corruption drive have reached levels unseen in decades.
According to official data from the party’s Central Commission of Discipline Inspection (CCDI), between 2012 and 2022, over 500 ministerial-level officials have been probed, later convicted, removed from their posts, and expelled from the party for corruption.
In just the past three years, more than 410 officials have been purged.
Some of those purges have reached places that were once considered untouchable.
The party’s top military decision-making body, the usually seven-member Central Military Commission is now down to only two members – one of those being Xi himself . The 24-member politburo - the party’s top echelon - is down to only 21 members.
Over the past three weeks, ahead of the Beijing meeting, the CCDI has been sending out near daily updates of arrests, new probes and expulsions from the party.
The news that Huang Qifan was being probed sent shockwaves through political circles.
Huang was a longtime mayor of the megacity of Chongqing, known as a consummate political survivor who had served under six different secretaries of the Communist Party – and seen two of them go to jail, including a former rival of Xi.
In retirement, Huang was prolific at conferences and on TV, giving his takes on the Chinese economy.
Since his downfall, those who knew Huang have rushed to scrub all mention of their former well-connected friend and colleague from their social media accounts – a common practice in China.
For Beijing deputy mayor Xia Linmao, the purge came suddenly. Only days before, state TV showed him at a meeting with Walmart’s Furner and a slew of other US executives, nodding and taking his notes as his boss invited the group to do more business in Beijing.
Others simply vanished from public view, with news of their investigation not appearing for months, like Ma Xingrui, an aerospace engineer turned senior party official who once ran the vast western region of Xinjiang. The authorities announced an investigation into him in April – after he had not been seen in public for five months.
Being officially investigated for corruption almost always spells the end of a political career in China, with guilty officials kept from the public eye even after they have served their sentences.
And in recent months, authorities have shown they are willing to use capital punishment to enforce the party line, even for those who were once trusted aides of Xi.
In May, two former defense ministers, Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu were given suspended death sentences, with a two-year reprieve , after being convicted of bribery.
Years of purging has left a generation of younger officials with fewer seniors left who can provide patronage, protection and career advancement, and the situation where the most powerful person in China does not have an apparent heir , in a break from his predecessors.
Deng Yuwen, a former deputy editor of the Study Times, the official publication of the party’s top training institute, told CNN that “now younger people all listen to Xi, isn’t this better? At this point, I don’t think Xi needs to worry about whether someone is already his trusted aides. “
“Whoever he promotes will become his loyalist,” said Deng. “And he has enough time to make someone his trusted loyalists.”
