For roughly twenty years, academic researchers held the view that the persistence of one-party rule in China into the twenty-first century — at a time when comparable governing systems across Europe had dissolved — owed primarily to the development of durable, well-established state institutions. Under the Chinese Communist Party, governance shifted away from the volatile one-man rule that defined the Mao Zedong period, with institutional structures associated with a modern state taking shape in its place. The party introduced term limits for its leadership, adopted a model of shared governance, and gradually advanced officials on the basis of demonstrated competence — factors that, according to some analysts, contributed to its capacity to withstand the pressures that had destabilised other socialist systems.

Over the preceding decade, Xi Jinping has taken a series of steps that have concentrated authority within his own hands, including the removal of presidential term limits in 2018, the reduction of collective decision-making structures, the absence of any named successor, and the replacement of senior figures within the military. Just months after nine senior military officers were removed from the party, the Ministry of National Defense disclosed that General Zhang Youxia and General Liu Zhenli — who had held the positions of highest-ranking uniformed officer and leading operational commander within the People's Liberation Army, respectively — were under formal investigation.

Data gathered by the Center for Strategic and International Studies shows that, from 2022 onward, approximately 36 generals and lieutenant generals have been officially dismissed by the party, with numerous others notably absent from public view. Some analysts in the United States interpret these moves as a reflection of underlying vulnerabilities, portraying the country's leadership as driven by distrust and preoccupied with consolidating personal authority.

Had the party's durability rested solely on the independent institutions established during the post-Mao period, Xi's consolidation of power might have been interpreted as evidence of underlying vulnerability; yet the party has displayed no observable fractures, and both Xi and the leadership appear to have strengthened their hold as these developments have unfolded. The way the CCP manages internal discipline appears, according to analysts, to contribute to its durability rather than undermine it, with political purges operating not as sporadic events but as a sustained organisational tool the party has deployed in broadly consistent fashion over a century.

Members are periodically scrutinised, assessed, and required to appeal for leniency to preserve their positions, with the process oriented toward rehabilitation rather than removal, thereby reinforcing loyalty and commitment to the organisation's objectives. Party officials consider the approach to be effective: Xi has adopted a doctrine of ongoing internal purification, which he frames as the mechanism through which the country will avoid the collapse that befell the Soviet Union and other socialist states.

The more pressing vulnerability for the party's durability lies not in the number of officials removed from their posts, but in the one challenge that purging alone cannot address and may in fact worsen: the question of leadership transition, on which any system built around continuous internal renewal will ultimately stand or collapse.

The CCP's practice of disciplining and removing members from its ranks has roots predating the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, with one form of purge — modelled on tactics employed under Stalin in the Soviet Union — encompassing imprisonment, exile, or execution as mechanisms for eliminating individuals from the party. Individuals subjected to such measures rarely endure them; as early as 1930, Mao directed the execution of more than 700 military officers to strengthen his authority — yet the approach the CCP has historically employed, and what accounts for its sustained dominance, represents something distinct from a standard political purge.

Party leadership has at times employed an alternative form of internal accountability known as rectification, which seeks to retain members within its ranks, though occasionally at a substantially reduced standing. Whereas a conventional purge typically removes individuals considered disloyal from an organisation, rectification works through a different mechanism — applying discipline and ideological conditioning to transform party members rather than expel them, a distinction reflected in the Chinese concept qingdang, which translates as cleansing the party.

Throughout its history, the CCP has more commonly pursued the correction of party members than their removal, a principle Mao formalised in December 1929 at Gutian, Fujian province, through a resolution addressing ideological discipline and affirming the party's authority over the military. The document also offered insight into how the organisation conceived of internal discipline: those targeted were characterised not as adversaries but as members whose thinking had strayed from accepted positions, with identified shortcomings including an excessively narrow focus on military matters, tendencies toward unrestrained democratic expression, or an orientation toward personal rather than collective interests.

The resolution framed each of these as a condition potentially addressable through structured peer-led sessions of criticism and self-criticism, coupling this process with a guarantee: party members who underwent it would be kept within the organisation rather than expelled or eliminated.

At Yan'an in northern China — the wartime headquarters Mao and his cadres established from the mid-1930s onward — party leadership elevated rectification campaigns to the level of formal doctrine. Between 1937 and 1940, party rolls swelled from around 40,000 to 800,000 members, leaving the vast majority of the organisation without established credibility among its leadership — a gap that the Rectification Movement of 1942–45 was designed to address. Each party member was required to produce a personal account of their life, evaluate it against standardised self-review guidelines, present a confession to their branch or work unit, and then undergo assessment, classification, and placement by the party's personnel apparatus.

In February 1942, Mao articulated the approach through a widely cited phrase about restoring the ill rather than condemning them; yet the Yan'an rectification movement proved far from lenient, with many individuals subjected to coercive treatment and thousands recorded as having lost their lives. While subsequent campaigns at times grew in intensity, the approach to party discipline under Mao distinguished Chinese communist governance from that of comparable authoritarian systems: where Stalin moved rapidly to purge unreliable members and Pol Pot resorted to mass killings, the Chinese model tended toward retaining such individuals, subjecting them to ideological re-education, and keeping detailed records of their offences.

The core process remains largely unchanged: an individual flagged for some form of deviation is required to produce a written self-assessment, which is then cross-referenced against testimony from peers and existing organisational records. Disciplinary measures follow a tiered structure, spanning from no consequences at one end through to full removal from the party at the other, with the majority of outcomes falling somewhere in between, such as formal reprimands or probationary periods.

Upon a verdict being reached, the individual — provided their confession is judged adequate — retains party membership under conditional terms, while all documentation produced throughout the procedure is entered permanently into the cadre's official record, a mechanism applied as far back as 1952 in the case of a village shopkeeper found to have diverted requisitioned grain. The same procedure remains in use within China's Politburo today, where members — among the most senior officials in the country — deliver written self-criticisms aloud to their colleagues annually, with those statements recorded and permanently appended to their personal files according to the template established at Yan'an.

While Xi has broadened the range of individuals subject to disciplinary action, the underlying mechanisms remain consistent with established practice; the cases of Zhang and Liu, like those of other removed military figures, appear to follow a familiar pattern in which officials are placed under formal party investigation rather than facing execution, and may retain nominal membership or be quietly reassigned to peripheral roles. According to media reports, Qin Gang lost his role as foreign minister in 2023, though he reportedly retained party membership and was subsequently placed in a junior post at a publishing house affiliated with the foreign ministry.

Formal party expulsion has remained uncommon even among those removed from their posts, with data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies showing that only 14 of the 101 generals and lieutenant generals identified as dismissed or potentially dismissed had received that formal sanction as of February.

Research spanning multiple decades, including data gathered by the party itself, indicates that rectification processes tend to produce temporary compliance rather than lasting attitudinal change among cadres, who typically return to prior conduct once a campaign concludes. The format is structured enough that participants tend to tailor their answers to meet assessor expectations, with the overall process appearing oriented toward producing documentation for the record rather than fostering any genuine shift in thinking. These records combine factual employment information with evaluations of an official's ideological standing, giving the authorities a mechanism for enforcing compliance regardless of whether any individual's behaviour or beliefs actually change.

For officials undergoing disciplinary review, the procedure effectively determines their standing within the party hierarchy, and because rank is continuously contested among cadres, a formal measure carries considerable weight and lasting consequences. Those who navigate a disciplinary review without serious repercussions typically experience a measure of relief, along with a renewed sense of loyalty to the system, while remaining conscious that another round of scrutiny may lie ahead.

With a membership now totalling 100 million, the party's personnel file system is reported to foster a form of self-regulation among members, given that individuals are understood to be aware their records may be reviewed or acted upon at any point. The dossier network maintained by the Chinese Communist Party — cataloguing each member's background, connections, and potential weaknesses on a permanent and accessible basis — also functions as a tool through which party leadership exercises substantial institutional control, given that those holding power in non-democratic systems depend on such intelligence channels to monitor and pre-empt internal challenges.

While the majority of party members follow official directives, those who fail to demonstrate the required compliance during disciplinary reviews may face expulsion or detention, a mechanism that also functions to prevent the formation of organised internal opposition. Instances of high-level dissent and defection do arise on occasion, though they tend to remain uncoordinated and fade without sustained momentum; the record-keeping system is structured to distribute responsibility broadly, shielding central leadership from direct accountability, with no single authority empowered to issue a formal rectification ruling.

Designated party task forces, referred to as work teams, are assembled to produce the verdict, which is then endorsed by the individual's workplace colleagues before being formally approved by an administrative body at a higher level. Responsibility for authorship is distributed across multiple actors, meaning no single leader or party unit can be identified as the sole originator; party members contribute to disciplinary outcomes through self-criticism, while rectification processes also function as a mechanism for organisational coordination.

China's governing structure encompasses a wide array of institutional bodies, regional authorities, and administrative units, each pursuing distinct priorities while routinely engaging in negotiation with one another. Rectification campaigns represent one of the few tools capable of cutting across factional lines, with party officials broadly recognising that participation carries both formal expectations and tangible consequences — ranging from preferential treatment for those who demonstrate the required disposition to career penalties or dismissal for those who fall short.

Party officials who would ordinarily exploit divisions within China's political structure have shown a tendency to align with disciplinary directives, offering the central leadership a tangible mechanism through which consistent policy objectives and organisational cohesion can be reinforced — a dynamic that echoes a recurring pattern in Chinese history, where dominant governing structures have gradually lost their authority and ultimately dissolved. Whereas Mao relied on broad popular mobilisation as a tool for correction, Xi has championed a doctrine of inward party reform — one premised on the belief that the organisation bears responsibility for resolving its own deficiencies.

Continuous internal disciplinary drives compel all party members to hold themselves to account, while the periodic removal of certain officials serves as a tangible demonstration that non-compliance carries real consequences; analysts have described this as a notable instance of the party formally embedding the conditions of its own continuity within its own structures.

In the autumn of 2014, with investigations into two senior military figures still under way, Xi convened roughly 400 high-ranking commanders at the Gutian hall — the location where Mao had previously delivered his address on correcting errors within the party — in what state media characterised as a renewed Gutian conference; ten years on, in 2024, Xi brought together military leadership at Yan'an to address political work, understood to mean ideological loyalty, a gathering the party framed as drawing a line of continuity between historical rectification efforts and its present approach to discipline. Underlying this symbolism is a reported apprehension held by Xi that China might trace a path similar to that of the Soviet Union, whose ruling party he views as having permitted its internal accountability structures to erode, ultimately hastening the state's collapse.

Beijing's position is that ongoing disciplinary campaigns are necessary for the party to retain its hold on power, and the CCP's enduring organisational strength lends some weight, according to analysts, to the argument that cadre oversight mechanisms have contributed to its longevity. The effectiveness of Xi's policies is assessed by some observers by whether they consistently generate documentation, judicial outcomes, and party membership decisions that consolidate institutional authority, rather than by the number of officials they have targeted.

Measures that consolidate party authority can simultaneously erode certain levers of state power, leaving senior military positions unfilled or occupied by officers with limited experience, while aspiring commanders absorb the lesson that a sparse career record carries fewer risks. Analysts have long observed that the party tends to favour ideological cohesion over operational efficiency when the two come into tension, a pattern that has persisted across decades and that the question of leadership transition has yet to resolve.

The system offers no pathway for identifying a future leader — and by preventing any subordinate from building an independent power base, it arguably makes the emergence of a viable successor less likely, not more. Leadership transition, rather than internal discipline, has historically been the point at which a party's organisational unity faces its greatest test — a vulnerability that earlier figures such as Mao and Deng Xiaoping navigated by drawing on their authority as founding revolutionaries whose roles had been central to the party's formation.

Earlier governments functioned within a set of institutional boundaries — among them term limits, collective leadership conventions, and formalised succession arrangements — that have since been removed under Xi, leaving the matter of future power transfers without the structural mechanisms that previously governed them. No clear evidence points to an imminent breakdown of the ruling party's authority; on the contrary, its internal power structures appear oriented toward preserving unity among the leadership, while observers note that a more likely path forward involves a state that faces military limitations yet grows more politically concentrated than many current forecasts tend to recognise.

Party strategists in Beijing are understood to be tracking this tension, given that even a long-established disciplinary apparatus credited with sustaining party cohesion offers no clear mechanism for resolving an intra-elite contest over leadership succession.