China's top leaders meet to enforce party rules

Chinese political leaders began a four-day closed-door meeting on Monday to address internal party discipline. President Xi Jinping uses these sessions to demand greater loyalty from officials while continuing his long-running anticorruption drive. The gathering is the fifth plenum and involves approximately 300 members of the party's Central Committee.

The timing places the meeting about one year before Xi is widely expected to secure a fourth five-year term as party leader. Analysts view the plenum as a key moment to align rising officials with Beijing's strategic goals. Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in London, told The Associated Press that the session allows Xi to ensure new generations of leaders share his view of the country's risks and opportunities.

Xi has spent 14 years purging thousands of officials for corruption, including dozens of current committee members. Despite these efforts, he remains critical of cadres who appear compliant but resist his orders internally. In a January speech published by state media this week, he described such officials as "two-faced," "politically opportunistic," and driven by "individualism."

According to Xinhua news agency, the committee will review a draft policy decision focused on rigorous party self-governance. The goal is to make cadres more disciplined and effective. Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, expects the session to call for closer scrutiny of public spending, wider use of technology to detect corruption, and stricter penalties for officials who fail to meet Xi's priorities.

Attendance at this year's plenum is expected to be the lowest since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Eight seats in the Central Committee are currently vacant, and 15 members are under investigation and may be replaced. The anticorruption drive has also impacted the military, removing five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission.

The plenum may result in new appointments to the military commission or structural changes to party control over the armed forces. These political discussions occur while China's economy faces weak domestic spending and a prolonged property sector crisis. Relations with the United States remain turbulent, adding pressure on the country's leadership.