China's Fifth Plenum Closes With 33 Expulsions and a Surprise Politburo Promotion

A session that turned inward

China's ruling Communist Party has closed its fifth plenum with a discipline-first message. The four-day meeting of the 20th Central Committee, held in Beijing from Monday 26 October to Thursday 29 October, ended with the adoption of a resolution on persevering with full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, according to the communique issued after the session and carried by the state news agency Xinhua.

The choice of subject is itself the story. Fifth plenums in the past have often set economic direction, but the previous plenum, in October 2025, had already adopted recommendations for the 15th Five-Year Plan covering 2026 to 2030. With that framework in place, this session turned to the Party itself: how its members are supervised, how discipline is enforced, and how central decisions are carried out across the country.

General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered a work report on behalf of the Political Bureau, and the communique says the Central Committee fully affirmed the Political Bureau's work since the fourth plenum. Xi also gave explanatory remarks on the draft resolution before it was adopted. The Political Bureau presided over the meeting.

Thirty-three expulsions confirmed

The communique formally confirmed the expulsion of 33 officials from the Party, Reuters reported from the Xinhua text. Among those named were Ma Xingrui, a former member of the Political Bureau, and Zhang Youxia, a former senior military leader. The list also included former military official Liu Zhenli, former senior diplomat Liu Jianchao, former industry minister Jin Zhuanglong, and Yi Huiman, who formerly chaired China's securities regulator.

Separately from the 33 expulsions, the communique said Li Yunze, the former head of China's financial regulator, had been removed from his position within the Party. The distinction matters: removal from a Party post and expulsion from the Party are not the same step, and the reports of the communique keep them apart.

The scale of the expulsions is the headline figure from the session. Thirty-three confirmed expulsions at a single plenum is a record for the period since reform and opening began in 1978, according to reporting on the communique. It also explains the room itself: the session was attended by 162 full Central Committee members and 117 alternates, 279 in all. That is six fewer full members and 30 fewer alternates than attended the fourth plenum in October 2025, and about three-quarters of the cohort elected at the 20th Party Congress in 2022.

A general moves up

The session's other personnel decision was an elevation, not a removal. Zhang Shengmin, a vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, was promoted to the Political Bureau, the Party's top decision-making body. He had become the country's second-ranking general at the fourth plenum last year, and his move into the Politburo was the meeting's most unexpected appointment.

Taken together, the two personnel signals point in the same direction. The Party is presenting its anti-corruption drive, now in its 14th year, not as a finished campaign but as a permanent system of supervision — and it is pairing that message with a reshaped military leadership as it heads towards its next congress.

What the communique does not yet say

Readers should be careful about what this document is. A plenum communique is a summary of decisions, written in broad Party language. It confirms the resolution, the expulsions and the promotion, but the fuller decision document, with operational detail on the new discipline rules, is expected days later, and observers have said before the close that concrete new measures, rather than restated commitments, would be the key test of this session.

Reporting on the communique also says the session set the 21st Party Congress for the second half of 2027 in Beijing. That congress, where the Party will choose its next leadership cohort, is the event this plenum is really preparing for — and the thinned attendance and the record expulsions are the clearest sign yet of how much the leadership has changed on the way there.

MagnetDaily will report the fuller decision document when it is published, and will not speculate on its contents before then.