Mike Baker

Once finalized, local officials are expected to fall in line with the plan's enforcement, making this a moment when Xi is moving to eliminate any space for dissent.

Party authorities say they disciplined a record 983,000 people in 2025, using punishments that range from reprimands and demotions to expulsions.

Now, that's nearly an 11% increase from what was already a record year in 2024, and the highest annual total since the party began publishing figures two decades ago.

You gotta love a communist party that annually publishes a record of how many people they've punished and disciplined.

State media quickly moved to reinforce Xi's message.

In a front-page commentary, the party's flagship newspaper said central directives are still being undermined by hesitant or misguided local officials.

Some regions, it warned, are blindly chasing industries promoted by Beijing, like semiconductors or electric vehicles or lithium batteries, even when local conditions make those projects impractical to pursue.

State media cautioned that when policies are implemented in ways quoted as detached from reality, it's easy for things to become distorted and good scripture to become twisted."

The solution, according to the party line, is stricter discipline.

In other words, when policy fails, the answer is enforcement.

But even the Communist Party admits that years of relentless purges have chilled initiative across China's bureaucracy, leading many local officials reluctant to even act at all.

That process comes at a particularly bad time, as local governments struggle with already slowing growth and heavy debt.

She has tried to address that contradiction by telling officials that honest mistakes can be tolerated and that discipline shouldn't extinguish willingness to act.

But between January and November of last year, over 140,000 people were punished for offenses tied exclusively to policy inaction or deceit.

That number surpasses the 138,000 cases recorded in all of 2024.

So this is where it becomes clear that the campaign is no longer just about corruption.

Since Xi launched it after taking power in 2012, the drive has evolved into a permanent enforcement mechanism designed to compel loyalty to his leadership.

Authorities say more than 7 million people have been punished over the past decade.

They have been busy.

And the purge has even begun to turn inward on the enforcement machinery itself.