Party Meeting: Discipline Drive Targets Officials' Compliance

Chinese leaders opened a closed-door meeting Monday to draft stricter rules for Communist Party cadres, a session that follows a 14-year corruption campaign that has removed thousands of officials. About 300 members of the party's Central Committee are attending the four-day gathering.

Eight seats on the 205-member Central Committee are empty. Another 15 members are under investigation and could be replaced, according to Reuters. The attendance would be the lowest since Mao Zedong died in 1976.

The meeting in Beijing, known as the fifth plenum, will consider a draft policy decision on advancing what state news agency Xinhua described as full and rigorous party self-governance. The goal is to make cadres more disciplined, effective and less corrupt.

President Xi Jinping has led the anti-corruption effort since 2012. He has also removed five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission, the party's top armed forces body. The plenum could name replacements to that commission.

In a January speech that state media released ahead of this week's session, Xi criticized officials he called two-faced, saying they appear to follow directives while inwardly resist, are politically opportunistic and pursue individualism.

Analysts expect the meeting to bring tighter scrutiny of public spending and major projects, greater use of technology to find corruption, and harsher penalties for officials who do not deliver on Xi's priorities. Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser at London's Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said the plenum is a chance to ensure the new generations rising through the ranks share Xi's assessment of the opportunities and risks China faces.

The session comes as China's economy faces weak domestic spending and a property sector crisis, alongside turbulent ties with the United States. Xi is widely expected to secure a fourth five-year term as party leader about a year from now, and the meeting precedes expected personnel changes to key leadership bodies. Eight of the Central Committee's seats are vacant, and the party's 14-year campaign against corruption has purged thousands of officials.