The fifth plenum of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, which closed on October 29, was not called to make appointments. It still said a good deal about who is on the way up and who is finished. Those who failed to turn up can be written off, while changes in rank, and even new faces in the room, show who is being groomed. 

Promotion in the CCP follows a ladder. Members of the Politburo’s Standing Committee, the top echelon of power, are drawn from the previous Politburo, and Politburo members usually come from the Central Committee, while the party constitution stipulates that vacancies on the committee go to alternate members in the order of the votes they received. An official who gets onto the ladder early has the best chance of reaching the top.

Barring sudden illness, an empty seat at a plenum points to chronic ill health or political trouble. The committee elected in 2022 had 205 full members and 171 alternates; only 162 full members and 117 alternates turned up this time. The plenum confirmed the expulsion of 33 people, including Zhang Youxia, once Xi Jinping’s most senior general. Together with earlier casualties – such as two members of the military commission, He Weidong and Miao Hua, and the former foreign minister Qin Gang, who quit the committee in 2024 – that brings the number removed to 37 full members and 15 alternates. 

Nearly 20 more full members stayed away from the plenum, though only three are formally under investigation. Among the absentees were Han Jun, who was removed as agriculture minister in April, the navy commander, Hu Zhongming, and the air force’s political commissar, Guo Puxiao. All three are probably finished.

The plenum promoted just one man: Zhang Shengmin, the sole remaining vice chair of the Central Military Commission (CMC), who joined the Politburo. Vice chairs normally sit there, but when Zhang Shengmin was appointed a year ago, Zhang Youxia still represented the military, so his elevation could wait. 

The delay may well have been a ruse. Xi was probably already planning to move against Zhang Youxia, and putting Zhang Shengmin on the Politburo then might have tipped him off. Making Zhang Shengmin vice chair and nothing more kept Zhang Youxia at ease.

Zhang Youxia’s fall left the armed forces with no one on the Politburo. The military is a vast interest group, and if it has no voice at the top, even on policies that touch both soldiers and civilians, resentment builds in the ranks. Zhang Shengmin’s promotion fills that gap and shows how much Xi now leans on him; it also explains why nobody else moved up. 

Xinjiang’s party chief usually sits on the Politburo, yet Chen Xiaojiang did not inherit the seat vacated by his expelled predecessor, Ma Xingrui. However sensitive Xinjiang is, it is still a province, and for now it ranks below the army. Chen will probably get his seat at next year’s party congress.

Nor did the CMC, whose membership requires a plenum’s approval, gain anyone, chiefly because Xi has too few full generals to choose from. Since Xi’s reforms, the commission has comprised Xi as chairman, two vice chairs, the defense minister, the chief of the joint staff, and the heads of political work and military discipline. Apart from Xi’s own, only three of these posts are filled: by Zhang Shengmin; by Dong Jun, the defense minister, whom Xi has long kept at arm’s length; and by Zhang Shuguang, discipline chief only since July. The other full generals have barely settled into their commands. Yang Zhibin and Han Shengyan, who lead the eastern and central theaters, were promoted last December, and Wang Gang, the air force chief, followed in July.

Filling the CMC is urgent, but Xi cannot afford to rush. The many members who missed the plenum without any announcement of their fall suggest that the investigations of the officer corps are far from over, and anyone Xi promotes must be clean, or the high command could collapse again. Expect the commission to be rebuilt at the 2027 Party Congress, the year of the army’s centenary. A Politburo seat raises Zhang Shengmin’s standing in the ranks, and Xi will probably keep him on to run the People’s Liberation Army.

The same caution shows in how the Central Committee’s 24 empty seats were handled. Only 10 were filled, at odds with the spirit of the party constitution, which has alternates step up as seats fall vacant. There was no shortage of alternates; Xi has simply become more careful about whom he elevates. Moving up from alternate is not always a reward. Ma Guoqiang, Wuhan’s party chief when COVID-19 broke out, was sidelined in 2020 but still promoted to full member two years later, 10 days before his term ran out. This time, with Xi choosing so carefully, the promotions carry more weight. Two names stand out: Lu Dongliang, the Shanxi governor, who was born in 1973 and has years left to rise, and Liu Jie, governor of Xi’s old power base, Zhejiang, who has powerful factional backers.

The last place to look is the back of the hall, where observers without a Central Committee seat sit. Most party careers move step by step, so jumping the queue usually signals patronage from the top. Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping often promoted people that way. Under Xi, the clearest example is Cai Qi, who ran Beijing without being even an alternate member, then went straight into the Politburo and later its Standing Committee.

Some of this year’s observers may follow the same path. Zhu Zhongming was elected Shanghai’s mayor only in September; if Chen Jining, the city’s party chief, moves to Beijing next year, Zhu could take his job and, like Cai, go straight into the Politburo. Chen Xinwu, who took over Chongqing’s government in late July, could do the same if the city’s party chief, Yuan Jiajun, moves to Beijing, though that is less likely.

On the military side, the observers included the four officers recently made full general and a group of deputies running their units. Among them were Zhu Chuansheng and Chen Demin, deputy heads of the CMC’s Joint Staff and Political Work Departments; Wen Junfei, the deputy commander in charge of military affairs in the Western Theater; and Wang Xianfeng, deputy commander and chief of staff of the Southern Theater, the only one of its leaders present because its commander and political commissar stayed away. When Xi rebuilds his high command, its new full generals and the chiefs of its departments, theaters and services will most likely come from this group. A few may make it onto the commission itself.