How a ruling party fares in staying clean and healthy has a direct bearing on the country's governance.

In the first three quarters of 2025, the discipline inspection and supervision departments nationwide investigated 789,000 cases involving corruption, and 90 ranking officials of provincial or ministerial level were investigated for corruption.

In his speech at the fifth plenary session of the 20th Communist Party of China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection that concluded on Wednesday, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, pointed the way forward and provided fundamental guidance for further advancing comprehensive and strict Party self-governance and the fight against corruption.

Broad in vision and down-to-earth in its guiding practices, Xi's speech made no bones about the fact that corruption is a stumbling block to the cause of the Party and the country, and the fight against corruption is a major struggle that the Party cannot afford to lose and must never lose. As he stressed, at this critical phase of basically realizing socialist modernization, full and rigorous Party self-governance must be exercised with higher standards and more practical measures to provide a strong guarantee for achieving the goals and tasks of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period.

The plenary session reviewed the discipline inspection and supervision work during 2025 and assigned tasks for 2026. It adopted a work report delivered by Li Xi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and secretary of the CCDI, on behalf of the Standing Committee of the CCDI. The session unanimously agreed that the CCDI will make reinforced efforts to persistently strengthen political oversight, and remain steadfast in improving conduct, enforcing discipline and combating corruption this year, according to a communique adopted at the meeting.

The CCDI will therefore strengthen its supervision, intensifying efforts to address corruption in key sectors such as energy, finance, firefighting, higher education, pharmaceuticals, State-owned enterprises, sports and tobacco. The related campaigns will be further deepened to tackle misconduct and corruption that occur at people's doorsteps. The aim is to spot and punish more promptly — according to the law and relevant rules — those Party members or officials who place personal interest before that of the people, practice cronyism, form cliques and abuse their power.

In his speech, Xi underscored that the key to the Party's self-reform lies in governing power, and caging the power with institutions is a crucial task for advancing full and rigorous Party self-governance in the new era. In line with this, the CCDI will work with the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, to establish institutional mechanisms that enable disciplinary inspectors to effectively detect corrupt elements.

The CCDI will also work with relevant departments to amend the regulations on intraparty supervision to make sure that leading officials are placed under effective supervision. Since graft cases involving leading officials usually cause heavy losses of public interests, strengthened preventative and supervisory measures are necessary. That is crucial as only when the leading officials, or the "key minorities" as they are called by the discipline watchdog, are put under effective supervision can power be truly confined within the cage of institutions.

Intensifying efforts to address problems in law and discipline enforcement has also been set as an important task for the CCDI, which will strengthen its supervision over law enforcement. Efforts in this regard will make sure that those who take advantage of law enforcement to encroach on people's interests will be punished.

Given that there have been instances of disciplinary inspection staff compromising on principles, and that some even act as a protective umbrella for corrupt elements, the CCDI itself should make continued efforts to standardize its work procedures and make sure that discipline workers have a strong sense of the rule of law, a strong sense of procedure and a strong sense of evidence.

It is therefore particularly important for the CCDI to deepen reform of the discipline inspection and supervision system and make better use of new technology to fulfill its duty so as to better enable it to consistently adapt to the new circumstances of its work and promote improved work conduct and foster new practices across the Party.