During the three-year campaign to consolidate the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) hold on power, at least 2.6 million people comprising KMT remnants, landlords and bandits were rounded up and half that number were sent to labour camps. In July, President Xi Jinping turned the crackdown inwards, going after his own law enforcers with a campaign to purge corrupt and disloyal officials in the public security and judicial spheres.

The latest purge is Mr Xi’s “method of reinvigorating his control of the domestic security apparatus – especially at a time when his personal authority and governing competence are being questioned due to the perceived weakness in his response towards ongoing US pressure”, said Associate Research Fellow James Char of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies‘ China Programme, RSIS.  “As an authoritarian regime lacking any form of external checks and balances, the CCP’s purges against its own members is thus an intrinsic mechanism to purify its ranks – we can be certain its Leninist governance policies will not change, whoever is in charge,” said Mr Char