(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) The Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China will be held in Beijing from October 26 to 29. The China Analysis Center of the Asia Society Policy Institute released this week a forward-looking report by Neil Thomas and others, "The Boundaries of Xi Jinping's Control: What to Watch at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Communist Party of China." The article said that Xi Jinping sometimes sounds like a Leninist version of Logan Roy - the overbearing patriarch in the American TV series "Succession" who controls a huge enterprise and exercises unquestionable authority, but is always disappointed by the people who are supposed to execute his will.
According to statistics in the article, the number of attendees at last year’s plenary session accounted for 83.8% of the original team, which was the lowest in the post-Mao era; this year, 291 people are expected to attend, accounting for 77.4% of the original 376 people. Among them, 20 full members and 8 alternates were expelled, 15 full members and 6 alternates are under investigation, and many others are missing. The military is particularly eye-catching: among the 44 officers elected as official members of the Central Committee in 2022, only Zhang Shengmin and Dong Jun have neither been purged nor disappeared.
The author pointed out that the number of officials punished for "formalism" and "bureaucracy" increased from about 46,000 in 2023 to 118,000 in 2025, and the number increased by 16% in the first eight months of 2026. Xi Jinping's assessment reforms make it harder for some neglected responsibilities to be ignored, but may also reward performances that "appear to be obeying."
Thomas believes that "the Fifth Plenary Session actually started the countdown to the 21st Congress." The communiqué should announce plans to hold a party congress in the second half of 2027. According to recent practice, October is the most likely month. The author also judged: "Xi Jinping still dominates politics and is likely to win a fourth term. He controls high-level appointments and the machinery of coercion, persuasion and monitoring, leaving other leaders with little room for resistance. The difficulties he encounters in getting officials to do their jobs do not mean that anyone is about to replace him."
As for succession, the author believes that it is unlikely: postponing the choice can preserve the current authority, but may deprive the policy of a powerful guardian; appointing a successor will give a subordinate growing power that he cannot fully predict. Party history is no consolation - Mao Zedong settled on Hua Guofeng just months before his death, and Deng Xiaoping immediately sidelined Hua and dismantled many of Mao's plans; Deng was more successful in preserving his own agenda, but he had a revolutionary authority that Xi did not and lived long enough to intervene when his chosen successor failed him.
The article concluded, "Logan Roy's distrust of would-be successors helped him stay at the helm, but left his empire unprepared for his departure. Xi Jinping faces the same dilemma. Concentrating power to himself makes it more difficult for him to cultivate someone capable of inheriting it."
This week, ChinaFile published a commentary by Zubayra Shamseden and Peter Irwin, "The Global Costs of Ignoring Xinjiang." The article said that when evidence of large-scale arbitrary detentions came out after 2017, civil society mobilized, many parliaments passed genocide resolutions, and the United Nations launched investigations; by 2026, this force had largely dissipated—the once outspoken government now rarely speaks or is completely silent, and Western companies continue to expand into the region largely unfettered. Human rights organizations estimate that there are between 400,000 and 500,000 Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking people in custody; the article pointed out, "If this region were a country, it would have the highest incarceration rate in the world."
The author believes that "by concentrating resource extraction and nuclear testing capabilities in one place, the Communist Party of China has turned Xinjiang into a kind of 'sacrifice zone' - where the people and land absorb the environmental, labor and health costs, while the economic benefits flow to industrial and urban centers elsewhere in China."
Sacrifice zones are not uncommon, the authors say, with precedents in Appalachia's coal regions and the Marshall Islands, but those communities were able to fight back, and grassroots movements even led to a de facto moratorium on nuclear testing; in Xinjiang, this possibility has been sealed - land, water and labor needed for coal chemical industry can be expropriated without opposition, and forced labor in the solar supply chain continues because workers "cannot organize, refuse work arrangements, or speak to outside investigators." The article concludes: The costs of unaccountable mining and exploitation find their way to the economy, and emissions, contaminated supply chains and the breakdown of nuclear restraint "do not respect national borders."
The author believes that "turning our attention away from the Uyghur crisis has costs for everyone. If we accept the logic of 'sacrifice zones' and believe that some people can be permanently regarded as expendable, it will significantly weaken the foundation on which global accountability and solidarity rests. And as Xinjiang becomes more and more deeply embedded in the systems that shape climate outcomes, supply chains and nuclear risks, the incalculable price the Uyghurs have paid will increasingly fall on the rest of us."
