China’s Xi Is Resurrecting Mao’s ‘Continuous Revolution’ With a Twist

livemint.com:

Chinese rulers have long used campaigns against corruption to sideline rivals and consolidate power. Xi Jinping is increasingly tying his authority to a new variation: a purge that never ends. With echoes of Mao Zedong’s “continuous revolution," Xi has sent fear rippling through the ranks of the Communist Party for more than a decade with the largest campaign against corruption in modern Chinese history.

It is now threatening to petrify the party as it tries to steer the world’s second-largest economy through its greatest period of uncertainty in a generation. Since he came to power in 2012, party enforcers have punished roughly five million people for offenses as serious as abuse of power and as innocuous as creating excessive red tape. In 2023 alone, the unrelenting campaign swept through the worlds of finance, food, healthcare, semiconductors and sports—taking down scores of senior officials, bankers, hospital directors and even soccer administrators.

China’s foreign and defense ministers went missing in the summer before being abruptly removed from their posts, leading to suspicions that they, too, have been purged. Beijing’s recent ouster of a dozen senior military and defense-industry officials from the national legislature and a government advisory body have fueled speculation about a broader shake-up of the country’s military establishment. There is no end in sight.