The Chinese Communist Party purged another top official Tuesday, as Xi Jinping intensifies his anti-corruption drive.
Ma Xingrui is the third Politburo member expelled since 2025 from the party’s top echelon, whose members previously enjoyed some impunity but now “drop like bowling pins,” a China-focused academic told The New York Times.
Beginning in 2012, Xi’s crackdown on corruption has seen millions of officials disciplined, but graft has become ever more “shameless” and “pervasive,” Semafor’s China columnist argued, “undermining Xi’s entire industrial agenda.”
Illicit riches are now being acquired in technology, where Xi is directing the country’s wealth: A rocket scientist-turned-bureaucrat, Ma was purged amid Beijing’s growing scrutiny of state aerospace and defense efforts.
