In Beijing, jittery government officials and mid-level managers have been reaching out to a small pool of seasoned criminal lawyers.
“Usually it comes after a colleague or a close associate has been rounded up, and they want to be at least able to explain things the graft fighters may find suspicious,” said a veteran criminal lawyer in Beijing, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
“That is something we hadn’t seen until these past few years.”
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As the list of those rounded up in China’s years-long anti-corruption probes becomes longer, a growing number of mid-level officials across the country have started to consider the once unthinkable – what if they are next?
Recent amendments to China’s Supervision Law have added to the growing unease among the rank and file. Individuals detained for investigation could now be denied access to legal help for up to 16 months.
The anxiety has become more distinct since President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive entered its second decade – with no signs of slowing down.
“As long as the soil and conditions for corruption exist, the anti-corruption struggle cannot stop for a moment. We must always sound the charge,” Xi declared at the 20th party congress in 2022.
In 2017, Beijing claimed that the campaign had been “an overwhelming success”. However, corruption remains a persistent blight on the Chinese political system, with the campaign netting record numbers of both senior officials and ordinary Communist Party members last year.
In 2024, the number of party members disciplined skyrocketed to 889,000, a staggering fourfold jump from 182,000 in 2013, according to an annual report by the party’s anti-graft watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).
Last year alone, 92 vice-ministerial level officials or above were investigated, 25,000 officials turned themselves in, and 91,000 confessed to their crimes.
“Over a decade after Xi’s crackdown began, the CCDI sanctioned 800,000 party members, which suggests that indiscipline, including corruption, remains a widespread and serious problem,” said Andrew Wedeman, director of China Studies at Georgia State University.
Despite Xi’s calls to “maintain a high-pressure stance against corruption at all times”, experts have pointed to several causes fuelling persistent corruption in China: systemic flaws such as absolute, unchecked power; monopolisation of resources; and a lack of external oversight and transparency.
Legacies of corruption, particularly during the eras of Xi’s predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, were seen as threats to the party’s rule and to central authority, with many cases dating back decades and adding to the growing total, analysts said.
The disciplinary inspection and supervision system has also increased its powers and resources. The result has been more investigations, stemming from an increasing number of political offences under disciplinary codes, extended detention periods, and broader use of AI-driven investigative tools, according to observers and insiders.
There has been no shortage of milestones in Xi’s fight against corruption since it was launched in 2012, soon after he came to power.
In a typical case of “systemic, collapse-style corruption” during Xi’s first term, four of 13 provincial standing committee members in central Shanxi province who were appointed in 2011 were removed, as well as others further down the ranks.
In southwestern Yunnan, three provincial party bosses or deputy party chiefs were placed under investigation the same year.
Over a span of three years, the top corruption watchdog toppled senior officials from all of China’s 31 provincial-level regions.
Top security officials, executives from the powerful state-owned oil sector and multiple regional chiefs have been removed as investigations reached higher levels and extended to officials who had already retired.
In the military, more generals have been brought down by anti-graft campaigns than those who died in China’s civil war, including two former defence ministers. The latest casualty was Miao Hua, an admiral and former head of the Central Military Commission’s political work department, who was sacked last year.
But years after the high-pressure purge campaign began, corruption in China endures.
Experts have pointed to inherent flaws in China’s political system, including weak external supervision and unchecked, wide-ranging power in the one-party state.
A Beijing-based political scientist, who asked not to be named due to the sensitive nature of the topic, said China’s lack of an independent judiciary and weak external oversight contributed to systemic corruption.
The political system itself also contained defects, such as the bottom-up hierarchical responsibility model with limited channels for society to provide feedback and supervision, she said, adding that weak political institutions with unclear boundaries and roles further exacerbated the problem.
Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, said effective anti-corruption strategies typically relied on government transparency, opposition oversight and media freedom, which China lacks.
Because China’s economy is dominated by state-owned enterprises, in which the ruling party has the biggest say over industrial policies and projects, “of course the officials in charge are facing temptations so hard to resist”, Wu said.
Under such circumstances, power can be easily abused, even by the lowest-level civil servants.
In December, China’s top court released details of what it said were typical corruption cases of six low-ranking officials. In one case, an official surnamed Qi, who served as a section chief in a local housing department, just above ordinary staff members, approved ineligible affordable housing projects in return for kickbacks worth 1.57 million yuan (US$215,000). In another case, the head of a small town embezzled more than 10.8 million yuan in state funds by manipulating tax incentives.
The “intertwining” of politics and business is another key factor driving corruption, according to Jingyuan Qian, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.
Bribery has long been used as a way to “establish trust” between local officials and private enterprises, he said. For instance, officials accept bribes to protect business interests, while businesses see it as a “guarantee of security” for their investments, Qian said. As local governments have prioritised economic growth, both politicians and businesses have been incentivised to use bribery to “grease the wheels” of those relationships, he added.
Another political scientist from eastern Shandong province, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, reasoned that no department or power was “inherently more transparent and fairer” than others, as “the nature of power tends to expand and be abused”.
He pointed to the fact that the disciplinary body itself was not an independent agency, as Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is.
“It ... must also answer to higher authorities or leaders. In other words, it is merely a tool for executing the will of those in higher positions,” he said.
The CCDI is “subordinate to the party leadership at the same level” because the party’s internal supervision is influenced by political factors, Qian said. The hierarchy made it difficult to investigate higher-ranking officials because party chiefs could interfere in the inquiries, he added.
Corruption has plagued the Communist Party for decades.
In the eras of Jiang and Hu, bribery soared to such unprecedented levels that the widespread misappropriation of resources threatened not only the party’s legitimacy but also its very survival.
Jiangnan Zhu, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s politics and public administration department, said corruption had “accumulated” over decades in the country, which had not established a strong “social culture of integrity”.
“It took ICAC many years to transform Hong Kong from a highly corrupt society to a clean society,” she said, noting that it was “natural” for the much larger mainland China to take a longer time.
Among the more formidable investigations in Xi’s sweeping campaign has been a “20-year accountability review” of Inner Mongolia’s coal sector, launched in 2020. By September 2022, nearly 800 cases involving 1,163 individuals had been investigated, resulting in disciplinary action against 942 people, according to the region’s disciplinary inspection commission.
Xie Maosong, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Strategic Studies at Tsinghua University, said the country’s method of fighting corruption was “the best option, given China’s current political structure”, and was essential to keep the party in power.
“The party has to push forward the anti-corruption campaign non-stop to provide the necessary momentum for China to make progress,” he said.
Data from the CCDI showed that Xi’s corruption crusade initially saw sharp increases in investigations but stabilised in 2018. In 2024, however, cases started to rise again as the number of party members disciplined shot up 45 per cent to 889,000 from 610,000 in 2023.
The rise was due to an intensified crackdown on rank-and-file officials, cadres and ordinary party members – known as the “flies” – who form the backbone of local governance, after many “tigers” or senior party or state leaders were brought down earlier.
In January, Xi urged the CCDI to boost efforts to go after “flies” and “ants”, the latter another reference to smaller players.
The rising number of officials facing disciplinary action was due to an “expansion of the anti-corruption campaign to lower level administrations and other institutions outside the traditional government departments ... compared with the initial focus on ‘big tigers’ and core government ministries”, the Beijing-based political scientist said.
Qian said now that the anti-corruption drive was a “top political priority”, party leaders and disciplinary officials at the grass-roots level had begun using the campaign to “display loyalty and compliance with the central agenda”, such as in the financial, medical and military sectors, each of which saw tens of thousands of party members disciplined last year.
“These crackdowns coincided with Beijing’s current focus on stabilising the banking sector, mitigating financial risks and intensifying war preparations amid geopolitical tensions,” Qian said.
Still, questions remain about how effective the campaign has been as a deterrent.
According to research by Georgia State University’s Wedeman, three-quarters of accused officials at the county and department levels were already taking bribes before 2013, and continued to accept them after the anti-corruption drive was launched.
More than half of the lower-ranking officials charged with corruption in recent years became corrupt during the crackdown, and many mid-level functionaries promoted by Xi to replace previously corrupt officials were later themselves charged with corruption, according to the study.
Among 210 officials promoted to senior positions since 2013 who faced corruption charges, 134 were found to have been corrupt at the time of their promotion, Wedeman’s research showed.
The findings indicate that the intensified crackdown “has failed to convince many officials and cadres that they face a significant risk of getting caught”, said Wedeman, who is writing a book titled Hunting Tigers and Swatting Flies: Xi Jinping’s Battle with Corruption.
“Xi, in short, does not seem to have won the battle for the hearts and minds of officialdom.”
Amid the years-long vortex of anti-corruption investigations, one agency has risen like a colossus: the CCDI. Its reach now extends into every corner of Chinese society – from the party to state-owned enterprises to university faculties.
Deng Yuwen, former deputy editor of Study Times, a newspaper published by the Central Party School, said more officials had been ensnared because the party’s disciplinary code was expanded under Xi and now included dozens of activities not considered offences before.
Disciplinary codes were revised three times; in 2015, 2018 and 2023, with the number of articles increased from 133 to 158.
The 2015 revision added new offences such as making irresponsible comments about government policies, forming political cliques and resisting investigations. In 2018, the code mandated loyalty to Xi through the “two safeguards”, requiring officials to uphold his authority and the centralised leadership of the party’s Central Committee, while adding punishments for factionalism and policy noncompliance.
The 2023 revision expanded disciplinary measures to target people associating with “political crooks”, seeking promotions through personal connections, refusing to implement major policies, and defying Xi’s development instructions.
“Before Xi, questioning Beijing’s policies or directions in private was considered ‘not so good’ but not punishable. Now, it is considered as an act of disloyalty, with very harsh punishment,” Deng said.
“With the disciplinary net cast much wider and the mesh becoming much smaller, of course more officials were caught.”
The disciplinary body’s own power has also grown since the National Supervisory Commission (NSC) was established in 2018. It replaced some functions of the CCDI – which could already question and detain party members without charge – with expanded powers to cover all public servants and village officials, prompting officials to seek advice from criminal lawyers in case they were questioned.
Last year, amendments to the Supervision Law further extended the liuzhi, or detention, to eight months from six months for county and prefecture level, and up to 16 months for cases handled by provincial and national supervisory committees.
Across the country, disciplinary agencies are also recruiting more detention centre guards, which analysts said could reflect stepped-up efforts to combat local corruption.
Based on the quota system the Chinese government typically uses to manage political goals, “ambitious CCDI officials would likely want to impress their supervisors and show their devotion to the anti-corruption campaign by over-delivering”, the political scientist in Beijing told the Post.
Advances in technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), may also be boosting corruption investigations, as investigators deploy new data techniques to uncover corruption, track funds and monitor the movements of officials.
Such methods have helped investigators uncover corruption in state enterprise bids and fraud in social welfare programmes, according to media reports.
In the city of Zhengzhou in central China, investigators have used AI to root out corruption in state enterprise bidding. Authorities in the city of Suifenhe in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang combined big data and DeepSeek’s AI models to detect fraud in social welfare programmes, according to local media reports.
An official source familiar with disciplinary work said big data and AI had “revolutionalised” corruption investigations, allowing officials to verify whistle-blower tips within just a few hours, compared with the weeks or months previously required.
“That is one major reason you see more people facing disciplinary actions,” he said.
Digital data can also help to uncover “corruption networks” more easily, the official said, highlighting his team’s ability to rapidly trace financial patterns and shareholding irregularities using AI, often identifying major shareholders within hours. “So far, no one has escaped my team’s thorough investigations in recent years,” the source said.
“In one extreme case, we even resorted to comparing the traffic data of an official’s vehicles to identify his regular hideouts for banquets and entertainment. Then we identified a few businessmen whose cars often appeared at the same time. We invited them to help in the corruption investigation, and we hit the bull’s eye.”
Additional reporting by Jun Mai and Sylvie Zhuang
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