Eight Seats Sit Empty as China Opens Party Discipline Session

Eight seats in China's Central Committee are empty as the Communist Party opened a four-day closed-door meeting on Monday to tighten discipline among its officials. Roughly 300 members are attending the fifth plenum, the lowest turnout for such a session since the death of former leader Mao Zedong in 1976. Another 15 committee members are under investigation and could be replaced.

President Xi Jinping is using the session to press officials on loyalty while continuing an anticorruption campaign that has run for 14 years. The drive has purged thousands of officials, including dozens of Central Committee members. Xi has criticized what he called "two-faced" officials who appear to comply with directives but "inwardly resist," are "politically opportunistic," and pursue "individualism," according to a January speech published by state media.

The campaign has reached the military as well. Five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission, the party's top armed forces body, have been removed. The plenum could bring new appointments to that commission.

The meeting falls about a year before Xi is widely expected to seek a fourth five-year term as party leader and ahead of anticipated personnel changes in key leadership bodies. Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in London, told The Associated Press the plenum offers a chance to make sure new generations rising through the ranks share Xi's view of the opportunities and risks China faces.

According to Xinhua, the committee will discuss a draft policy decision on advancing full and rigorous party self-governance. Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, expects calls for closer scrutiny of public spending and major projects, wider use of technology to uncover corruption, and tougher consequences for officials who do not deliver on Xi's priorities.

The talks are taking place as the world's second-largest economy struggles with weak domestic spending and a prolonged crisis in the property sector. Political and economic relations with the United States remain turbulent.