The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has emerged from its Fifth Plenum with an even sharper focus on party discipline, loyalty and Xi Jinping’s control, after a meeting marked by record expulsions and unusually low attendance among top officials. The plenum formally elevated “Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building” and reinforced what Beijing calls “full and rigorous Party self-governance,” even as 33 Central Committee members were expelled, including 16 senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officials. The military purges have left the Central Military Commission (CMC) with just Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin, raising questions over command stability, modernization and the PLA’s readiness for a Taiwan contingency. In this episode, we examine what the Fifth Plenum reveals about Xi’s consolidation of power, whether loyalty is overtaking competence inside the Party and military and what the upheaval could mean for succession, PLA effectiveness and cross-strait risk in the years ahead.
*Recorded on November 5, 2026 at 2:30pm Taiwan Standard Time
Host: Wen-Ti Sung
Producer: Suvam Pal
Videographer: Damon Lin
Our guests:
Yuan I
- National Chengchi University Institute of International Relations Adjunct Research Fellow
Yukteshwar Kumar
- University of Bath Chinese Stream Course Director and Senior Lecturer in Politics, Languages and International Studies
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