China watchers have been looking at the official numbers regarding attendance this week.
You would need a pretty good excuse not to turn up to a Plenum session chaired by Xi. For example, very serious illness.
And yet, of the 205 members of the Central Committee, only 168 were there.
We know that one has died and 10 have already been purged.
That leaves 26 missing cadres.
Do these missing members mean that more senior Party officials have been taken down in the latest “anti-corruption” drive than have been reported?
On top of this there are also dozens of missing “alternate” delegates. These are non-voting positions for people who can fill missing slots as required.
Names of those not in attendance have not been provided, but it is not a small number of missing delegates. This has led to wide speculation that they too have been purged in the latest sweeps from the Party’s feared internal discipline inspection teams.
In the military alone the numbers are stark.
It seems that of the 33 generals who are members of the Central Committee, 22 did not attend the plenum. This might include the eight who have been removed officially but where are the other 14? Who are they and what happened to them?
With China’s opaque system of governance, sometimes questions like these are never answered.
What is clear though is that the Party was clearing the decks in the days leading up to this gathering so such dismissals could be made official, including the expulsion of He Weidong who was number three in the PLA.
Political analysts will argue though as to whether this represents strength or weakness on General Secretary Xi’s part. Are these the acts of a paranoid leader concerned that power blocks might be forming beyond his control, or the firm hand of a figure prepared to take down those who act improperly irrespective of their rank?
Either way, it seems there will be no letting up.
At a press conference on Friday, the Director of the Central Policy Research Office, Jiang Jinquan, said the Party would “maintain an unwavering tenacity with no finish line in the fight against corruption”.