The curious case of disappearances in the Chinese Communist Party

Xi Jinping’s obsession with securing his position in the Communist party pantheon is running into too many contradictions.

High ranking members of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) are disappearing with an alarming regularity.  Are they being punished for corruption or disloyalty? While it does point to some disruption of Xi Jinping’s third term, are these portents of imminent upheaval?

Xi’s Third Term Troubles

Public dissatisfaction started surfacing in February 2018 when it was announced that term limits for the president and vice president would end. Li Datong, former editor of the State-run Youth Daily criticised the move through a WeChat post and called on 55 deputies to oppose the move that will lead them to chaos and set the wheel back to the times of Mao Zedong.

Disaffection with Xi’s handling of the COVID pandemic meant more open criticism of this move by academicians, professors and citizens, on social media. An important mention in this regard is a letter published by reputed Tsinghua University Professor Xu Zhangrun, who authored a 6,246-word essay on February 5, 2020, captioned “Angry People No Longer Fear”, which went viral on China's social media.

It accused China’s leaders, specifically Xi Jinping, of being out of touch with the people's needs and perpetuating an elite with so-called “Red Genes”. It accused Xi Jinping and a "small circle of leaders" of creating a "state within a state” and engaging in "big data terrorism".

CCP’s New Credo: Loyalty To Xi

Xi Jinping retaliated with periodic articles on how cadres should behave and study revised party histories. At the Sixth Plenum Central Committee of the CCP, new tenets were added to "safeguard the 'core' status of General Secretary Xi Jinping within the CCP" and "To safeguard the centralised authority of the Party" which meant that protecting Xi Jinping became the main task of Chinese society. Further, Xi Jinping’s men were put in important positions in the security apparatus to cull any dissent.

An article published in October 2022 by Xinhua is of great importance in detailing how loyal yes men were stuffed into party positions. Instead of engaging in direct elections, there was a process of screening and interviews to finalise the candidates and the main test was loyalty to the new dogma of protecting Xi.

A question then arises that despite such concerted efforts to stuff the party with loyalists: Why did Xi Jinping launch a new political education campaign – his sixth – on April 3, 2023? This new campaign aimed to identify and eliminate party cadres of doubtful loyalty to Xi.

Intrigues And Factionalism

This brings us to the case of former Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang, Commanders of PLA Rocket Force, and the now missing Minister of Defence  Li Shangfu who are close associates of Xi Jinping.  Qin Gang was removed as Foreign Minister after a month of disappearance but retained his post as State Councillor showing that Xi Jinping has not completely given up on him. It was a hard bargain and a result of inter-party conflict where factions are working against each other.

The appearance of reports of Qin Gang’s affair with the Phoenix TV anchor Fu Xiaotian bears the fingerprints of Zeng Qinghong (Jiang Zemin faction). An affair is not enough to discredit a CCP official. However, involvement with a foreign intelligence organisation is a different matter and is viewed very seriously.

But Zeng Qinghong's style has been to put out such rumours to discredit cadres. He is also known to be vindictive. In China's political circles, the saying is that no one wants to get on Zeng Qinghong's wrong side. Both Jiang Zemin, the former CCP General Secretary, and Zeng Qinghong, who was his top aide, are known to have regretted agreeing to Xi Jinping's appointment as Party Secretary of Shanghai and have been opposed to him for some years now.

The second explanation for the exits  is one of factional infighting within Xi Jinping’s close ranks, each of which would want their faction (for example, the Zhijiang faction, Fujian faction, technocrats’ faction, Shaanxi faction) to have an upper hand in key appointments as seems to be the case with Li Shangfu.

The Purges Won’t Stop

One can only speculate but one thing is clear: Purges will not stop as dissent is rising against Xi Jinping for two reasons.

First, as a reaction to weeding out any voices of dissent against Xi Jinping’s internal and external policies (including the deteriorating US-China relations and support to Russia for the Ukraine war).

Second is the dismal state of the economy about which, it seems Xi Jinping is least bothered, and all his attention is focussed on political and ideological education to secure his position.

Namrata Hasija is a Research Fellow at the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.