Xi’s enforcers punished nearly a million in 2025—and China’s leader wants more
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has directed relentless purges to assert a degree of autocratic control unseen in China in decades, with Communist Party enforcers punishing nearly a million people last year.
But when it comes to getting things done, he still wants more commitment to his agenda. Weeks before Beijing is set to launch a new economic blueprint for the next five years, Xi ordered the party’s discipline inspectors to flex their supervisory powers even more forcefully and ensure his policies are executed as intended.
“Corruption is a major obstacle and a stumbling block in the advancement of the party and the nation’s causes," Xi said this week at a conclave of the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. This year, he said, party inspectors must help enforce the top leadership’s decisions more resolutely, and ensure Beijing achieves its goals in the new five-year plan.
Party authorities pushed their disciplinary crackdown to new heights in 2025, when a record 983,000 people were disciplined, according to data published Saturday. This represents a 10.6% increase from what was already a record year in 2024, and the highest annual total since the party started releasing such data about two decades ago.
State media expounded on Xi’s message, saying Beijing’s plans are still being frustrated by misguided and foot-dragging bureaucrats across the country—and the party must do more to rein them in. “Some areas follow trends blindly" and pursue projects in high-profile sectors championed by Beijing, such as semiconductors, electric vehicles and lithium batteries, even though local conditions aren’t conducive for such industries, the party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s
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