China Power | Politics | East Asia

What China’s Half-Empty 5th Plenum Says About Its Next Leaders

Empty seats and back-row observers at the Communist Party’s latest plenum hint at how Xi will remake the elite in 2027.

The fifth plenum of the CCP Central Committee convenes in Beijing, China, Oct. 29, 2026.

The fifth plenum of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, which closed on October 29, was not called to make appointments. It still said a good deal about who is on the way up and who is finished. Those who failed to turn up can be written off, while changes in rank, and even new faces in the room, show who is being groomed. 

Promotion in the CCP follows a ladder. Members of the Politburo’s Standing Committee, the top echelon of power, are drawn from the previous Politburo, and Politburo members usually come from the Central Committee, while the party constitution stipulates that vacancies on the committee go to alternate members in the order of the votes they received. An official who gets onto the ladder early has the best chance of reaching the top.

Barring sudden illness, an empty seat at a plenum points to chronic ill health or political trouble. The committee elected in 2022 had 205 full members and 171 alternates; only 162 full members and 117 alternates turned up this time. The plenum confirmed the expulsion of 33 people, including Zhang Youxia, once Xi Jinping’s most senior general. Together with earlier casualties – such as two members of the military commission, He Weidong and Miao Hua, and the former foreign minister Qin Gang, who quit the committee in 2024 – that brings the number removed to 37 full members and 15 alternates. 

Nearly 20 more full members stayed away from the plenum, though only three are formally under investigation. Among the absentees were Han Jun, who was removed as agriculture minister in April, the navy commander, Hu Zhongming, and the air force’s political commissar, Guo Puxiao. All three are probably finished.

The plenum promoted just one man: Zhang Shengmin, the sole remaining vice chair of the Central Military Commission (CMC), who joined the Politburo. Vice chairs normally sit there, but when Zhang Shengmin was appointed a year ago, Zhang Youxia still represented the military, so his elevation could wait. 

The delay may well have been a ruse. Xi was probably already planning to move against Zhang Youxia, and putting Zhang Shengmin on the Politburo then might have tipped him off. Making Zhang Shengmin vice chair and nothing more kept Zhang Youxia at ease.

Zhang Youxia’s fall left the armed forces with no one on the Politburo. The military is a vast interest group, and if it has no voice at the top, even on policies that touch both soldiers and civilians, resentment builds in the ranks. Zhang Shengmin’s promotion fills that gap and shows how much Xi now leans on him; it also explains why nobody else moved up. 

Xinjiang’s party chief usually sits on the Politburo, yet Chen Xiaojiang did not inherit the seat vacated by his expelled predecessor, Ma Xingrui. However sensitive Xinjiang is, it is still a province, and for now it ranks below the army. Chen will probably get his seat at next year’s party congress.

Nor did the CMC, whose membership requires a plenum’s approval, gain anyone, chiefly because Xi has too few full generals to choose from. Since Xi’s reforms, the commission has comprised Xi as chairman, two vice chairs, the defense minister, the chief of the joint staff, and the heads of political work and military........

© The Diplomat