Another plenum, another record... just not the kind that goes on the economic scoreboard.

China's Communist Party wrapped up the fifth plenary session of its 20th Central Committee on Thursday after four days behind closed doors, and the Xinhua readout confirmed the expulsion of 33 senior officials, the most ever at a single plenum, 16 of them from the military. That includes Gen. Zhang Youxia, until January Xi's closest ally in uniform and the PLA's top-ranking general, whose fall we covered in real time back in "Shockwaves In Beijing: Xi Targets His Own Top General, Longtime Confidant, In Elite Purge" (Jan 24).

The party says it is "turning the blade inward" to "eliminate serious hidden dangers." Translation: nobody below Xi is safe, and the purge is accelerating going into next year's leadership congress, which the plenum formally scheduled for the second half of 2027 and where Xi is all but certain to collect a fourth term.

Using Nikkei Asia's breakdown of who fell and who rose, let's look at the casualties, the survivors, the promotions and what it all means for 2027.

"Offend Thousands Rather Than Fail 1.4 Billion"

On Friday morning Beijing sent Zhang Fuhai, deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), to take a victory lap. He told reporters that Xi has led an "unprecedented" drive with the resolve to "offend thousands rather than fail 1.4 billion people," and that "the results are plain for all to see."

Well, the results are certainly plentiful. According to Zhang, authorities have punished almost 8 million people, including 963 senior officials, since the 18th Party Congress in November 2012, and 680,000 were disciplined in the first nine months of this year alone. And there is more to come: the CCDI pledged to intensify its "high-pressure deterrence" and to "leverage technology" to make it more effective, which sounds about as relaxing as it reads.

Besides the generals, the headline civilian scalps were:

Ma Xingrui, ex-Politburo member, Xinjiang party boss and former president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC). Expelled in July, per Reuters, on charges ranging from selling promotions to "large-scale family corruption" (and exchanges of "power for sex"), making him the third sitting Politburo member purged this term;

Liu Jianchao, ex-head of the party's International Department and once the foreign ministry's best-known spokesman, missing from public view since August of last year and at one point tipped as the next foreign minister. As ChinaTalk pointed out, Liu also once ran Xi's global manhunt for corrupt officials, so the hunter has officially become the hunted;

Lan Tianli, former chairman of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region government.