It is very rare for an annual plenary session of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the nation’s top anti-graft body, to be held two months earlier than usual. Presiding over the meeting last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to keep up the intensity of his sweeping anti-corruption initiative. The Central Military Commission closely toed the party line the next day, pledging “absolute loyalty” to Xi in beefing up the corruption crackdown.
China Daily subsequently ran an article revealing that former security chief Zhou Yongkang and one-time high-flier Bo Xilai had formed a clique in preparation for “a big game” – hinting that the two had harbored nefarious intentions of trying to topple Xi at some point in his first term.
There are growing indications that Xi’s campaign is not going to die down, yet it is getting “arduous and complicated,” as Xi himself claimed, and of course it is also getting more interesting. It looks almost certain that Xi is now ready to point his cannon at some in the innermost circle of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who were once considered “too big to fall.” In 2015, we may well witness a showdown with one or more “super tigers” that could lead to a “defining victory”- a term increasingly used in the state media’s rhetoric.
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