The 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China held its 5th plenary session on January 14, 2026, and issued a lengthy Communiqué. Below, I hope to discuss a few notable points in the document.
Firstly, the Communiqué explicitly ties the work of CCDI to the success of the 15th Five-Year Plan. Essentially, the swatting of flies and caging of tigers will now be explicitly interlinked with preserving billions of yuan from being siphoned off or misused. Linguistically, too, this shift is indicated as moving from “stopping corruption” to “guaranteeing high-quality development.”
Secondly, the document uses the famous metaphor of the “cage of the system” but with more urgency. It essentially lays emphasis on rule-based governance rather than just personality-driven discipline. In that regard, the Communiqué also calls for 2026 to be the “Year of Standardization, Legalization, and Regularization.” Also, for the first time, there is a strong focus on the National Supervisory Commission (NSC) reporting to the National People’s Congress (NPC), suggesting a check on the CCDI’s own power to prevent what the document refers to as “blind spots.”
Thirdly, Xi said at the plenary:
“[There is a] need to stay attuned to new trends and features of corruption, and urge efforts to innovate methods and approaches, promptly detect and accurately identify corrupt practices, and effectively address all forms of corruption, in order to continuously enhance the penetrating power of anti-corruption efforts.”
In this light, a major takeaway of mine is the idea of the “Year of Digitalization.” The CCDI is moving away from purely human-led investigations toward big data and AI supervision, wanting to use algorithms to track capital flows, equity relationships, and even kinship ties across departments. To this end, expected returns, agreed-upon shareholding, and the “revolving door” between government and business have also been identified as “new types of corruption and hidden corruption” that must be investigated.
Fourth, there is a notable shift in the demographic focus of discipline enforcement. A new focus on younger officials, who may have grown up in a more affluent era and might be more susceptible to “capital infiltration,” has been highlighted in the Communiqué. The focus is also on those who can be identified as the “key few” in the party-state ecosystem. One could see this coming, since half the Central Military Commission (CMC) was swept up in purges in the last 3 years. Not to mention, in 2025 alone, 65 centrally-managed officials were investigated, and over 780,000 cases were filed nationwide. The intent is to show that no generation or rank is exempt.
If you’re keen on finding out a bit more on corruption in the military’s procurement ecosystem, check out my view for The National Interest from earlier this year, here.