Full scrutiny, tangible returns: How Party's discipline push is benefiting households in China

Editor's Note: Gao Lei is an associate professor and research fellow at the Collaboration Centre for Theories and Practice of Open Economy, Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Opening-up, Research Institute of Globalization and China's Modernization, University of International Business & Economics. Xia Lu is a professor at the School of CPC History and Party Building and a research associate at the National Academy of Development and Strategies of Renmin University of China. The article reflects the authors' opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

The highly anticipated Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) concluded last week and the session's communique immediately sparked widespread discussion upon its release. The communique explicitly states that, in persistently advancing the comprehensive and strict governance of the Party, it is necessary to thoroughly study and implement Xi Jinping's Thought on Party building. More precisely, this is not a concept first introduced at this plenary session; rather, it represents the crystallization of the practice of governing and managing the Party since the 18th National Congress of the Party, elevated at the plenary session marking the opening year of the 15th Five-Year Plan period into the fundamental guiding principle for Party building on the new journey.

For Party self-governance in the new era, the communique sets out seven guiding principles: serving the mission and tasks; taking political development as the overarching principle; pursuing comprehensive and strict governance; adopting a problem-oriented approach; upholding fundamental principles while fostering innovation; leading by example from the top down; and governing the Party in accordance with rules. These seven principles are not merely parallel statements; they distill the most effective experience in exercising full and rigorous Party self-governance in the new era into a replicable methodology.

The statement's deployment is not a general declaration; rather, it addresses the unique challenges faced by major political parties and the risks emerging in the new stage. With accelerating external changes and heavy reform tasks, the statement emphasizes "strengthening Party spirit, establishing a correct view of political achievements, and enhancing the capacity to undertake initiatives and carry out work," directly targeting officials who are afraid to take action, lack the ability to act and somehow cannot deliver tangible results.

The plenum's communique also concluded with the adoption of a resolution on "persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance," and the framing matters for international observers and China watchers: Party discipline is no longer presented as an internal housekeeping matter but as a governance instrument with measurable consequences for ordinary citizens. The plenum's language around the "correct view of political performance" and its emphasis on accountability at every link deserve attention not for ideological packaging but for what it reveals about how power is being re-channeled toward service delivery.

In terms of mechanisms, Party discipline works as a performance-accountability tool. The plenum's core proposition is that discretion must be "put into the cage of regulations" and responsibility "tightened at every link." In practice, this translates into instruments that change incentive structures at the front line. Local governments are required to publish "a public, itemized list of minor official powers at the grassroots level" specifying the scope, process and responsible actor for each administrative act, while supervisory bodies deploy "discipline-inspection-audit" joint mechanisms and layered oversight over livelihood projects. The plenum's stress on the "correct view of political performance" reinforces this principle: officials are being evaluated on verifiable outcomes rather than merely showcase projects or statistical inflation, and the education campaign on this theme is explicitly tied to the plenum's implementation agenda.

The benefits of improved Party discipline reach households. The livelihood payoff is where the governance argument becomes concrete. In 2025, disciplinary inspection and supervision authorities said they investigated 967,000 cases nationwide involving misconduct and corruption affecting people's interests, disciplined 627,000 individuals, and transferred 22,000 people to procuratorial authorities. These figures represent recovered wages, restored reimbursements and refunded fees. The plenum's follow-through includes targeted rectification in school meal management – with parent oversight committees now covering most schools – and in medical insurance, where high-frequency unannounced and on-the-spot inspection and drug traceability codes are being used to cut fraudulent claims. These are small sums relative to the national budget, but they are precisely the kind of petty extraction that erodes trust far more than corruption does.

In addition, technology and participation can serve as force multipliers. Two features distinguish this round from earlier campaigns. First, big-data supervision is being used to flag anomalies that manual inspection would miss; for instance, Qingyun County in east China's Shandong Province generated over 3,000 suspicious indicators, converting 300 into formal leads and resulting in disciplinary action against 120 officials. Second, "mass evaluation" mechanisms are being institutionalized: in some localities, residents are invited to rate the results of rectification, and livelihood projects are assessed on a "party committee takes primary responsibility, government leads implementation, discipline commission drives, departments execute and the public evaluates" model. This might not be the electoral accountability people see in the West, but it does impose a feedback loop that makes local cadres answerable to the people who experience the consequences of their decisions.  

For international readers, the relevant question is not whether this model is like the West – it is not designed to be – but whether it produces durable governance capacity. The evidence suggests a system attempting to solve a universal problem: how to make street-level bureaucrats accountable both to national strategies and to the needs of citizens. By embedding oversight into routine administrative data, tying promotion to a "correct view of political performance" and creating channels for public evaluation, China is experimenting with a form of performance accountability that bypasses the West but still imposes costs on malfeasance. Whether this sustains public confidence will depend on whether the disciplinary machinery remains insulated from the power it is meant to check, and whether citizens continue to see returns – not just rhetoric – at the household level. The plenum's emphasis on "perseverance" implicitly acknowledges that this is an unfinished project.