Party Meeting Opens With Historic Low Attendance

China's top Communist Party officials gathered on Monday for a four-day meeting focused on tightening discipline among cadres. About 300 members of the Central Committee are attending the fifth plenum, a closed-door session. Xi Jinping is pressing officials for loyalty while continuing a 14-year anticorruption campaign that has purged thousands of officials, including dozens of committee members.

The attendance figure marks a low point. Eight Central Committee seats are vacant, and another 15 members are under investigation and could be replaced. Turnout is expected to be the lowest since Mao Zedong's death in 1976. The purge has reached the Central Military Commission as well, removing five of its seven members.

The anticorruption drive has removed thousands of officials over 14 years. In a January speech published by state media, Xi criticized 'two-faced' officials who appear to comply with directives but 'inwardly resist', are 'politically opportunistic' and pursue 'individualism'.

According to Xinhua, the committee will discuss a draft policy decision on advancing 'full and rigorous party self-governance.' Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, told the Associated Press the session is a chance to make sure new generations rising through the ranks share Xi's view of the opportunities and risks China faces. Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, expects calls for closer scrutiny of public spending and major projects, wider use of technology to uncover corruption, and tougher consequences for officials who do not deliver on Xi's priorities.

The meeting sits about a year before Xi is widely expected to win a fourth five-year term as party leader, and ahead of anticipated personnel changes in key leadership bodies. It proceeds as China's economy struggles with weak domestic spending and a prolonged property sector crisis, while political and economic ties with the United States remain turbulent.

The plenum could bring new appointments to the Central Military Commission, and Xi might restructure the party's control over the military. The session runs through Thursday.