Xi targets petty corruption on a giant scale to soothe China’s masses

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is battling petty corruption through a nationwide campaign that has swept up more than half a million low-level officials over the past year, as Beijing grapples with rising public resentment over a sagging economy.

Communist Party enforcers are targeting grassroots graft from kickbacks for public contracts to bribes for medical treatment in a renewal of Xi’s popular assault on corrupt “flies” and “ants”—low-level bureaucrats and state workers—whose misconduct affects ordinary citizens.

Such energetic enforcement is pushing Xi’s war on corruption to new levels of intensity, more than a decade after he launched it to burnish his image as a man of the people and secure the party’s grip on power. Since Xi became leader in 2012, party inspectors have disciplined more than 6.2 million people for offenses ranging from corruption to bureaucratic inaction.

The latest campaign is part of China’s response to social reverberations from broad economic challenges—including a real-estate slump and high rates of youth unemployment—that have sapped consumer confidence, stoked unrest and fueled grumbling over Xi’s stewardship of the world’s second-largest economy.

“Punish the ‘greed and corruption of flies and ants,’ and give the masses a greater sense of fulfillment,” Xi said early last year as he ordered the party’s top disciplinary body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, to curb grassroots graft.

Party inspectors proceeded to root out what they call “unhealthy tendencies and corruption issues that occur close to the masses.” Authorities punished 530,000 people and sent 16,000 of them to prosecutors for criminal proceedings in 2024.These probes drove up overall disciplinary cases to record levels last year, when the party penalized 889,000 people.

The offenses have included bribery, abuse of power and the misuse of public funds meant for school meals, pensions, medical insurance and rural development. The party also ramped up pressure on bribe-givers, opening investigations against 26,000 people last year for offering payoffs and inducing graft, a 53% increase from the year before.

The CCDI’s official newspaper said the crackdown reflects the party’s commitment to sustaining its “flesh-and-blood ties with the people” and ward off threats to its legitimacy. Curbing petty corruption “is a major task that affects the foundations of the party’s governance,” the newspaper said in a commentary this month.

“People may grumble about high-level officials enriching themselves, their families and their cronies, but ordinary citizens are likely to have a more visceral reaction to corruption when they are personally affected,” said Andrew Wedeman, a professor at Georgia State University who studies corruption issues in China.

Beijing has faced simmering unrest fueled by economic grievances. China Dissent Monitor, a platform run by U.S. rights group Freedom House, tracked an increase in protests last year driven in part by disgruntled workers and home buyers, with more than 2,400 incidents from January to September—up 16% from the same period in 2023.

Many local governments, whose coffers have been depleted by wasteful investments and the loss of land-sales revenues, are scrounging for funds to pay vendors and run public services.

The CCDI has claimed initial success in its petty-graft crackdown, showcasing the results in official disclosures and state media. In January, state television aired a four-part documentary, “Fighting Corruption Is for the People,” that depicted how authorities penalized officials for abusing powers and embezzling funds.

One featured case was in the northeastern city of Changchun, where officials at a primary school were found to be taking kickbacks from a catering company in return for maintaining a long-term business partnership.The company gave more than 700,000 yuan—equivalent to around $97,000—in kickbacks between 2010 and 2019, including more than 230,000 yuan to the school’s logistics director, Qi Shiguo.

“I infringed upon children’s interests in having meals and infringed upon parents’ interests,” Qi said in an interview for the documentary. “I searched my soul and felt very ashamed.”

Xi’s fly-swatters have also gone after local officials accused of misappropriating resources meant for social programs, including rural revitalization, medical insurance and elderly care.

A village official in Shanxi province was punishedforfraudulently claiming more than 200,000 yuan in poverty-relief fundsbyregistering relatives as poor households. The party expelled the official in September and handed the case to prosecutors.

The CCDI’s top official, Li Xi, said the fight against petty corruption was addressing citizens’ concerns and helping social stability. He promised to keep the crackdown going for two more years.

“The people have personally felt the care and concern from the party center and General Secretary Xi Jinping around them,” Li said in January. “They have become more supportive and trusting of our party.”

Xi’s relentless disciplinary purges have helped him consolidate power and tighten control over a vast bureaucracy. Though he declared in 2018 a “crushing victory” over corruption, party enforcers have gone on to slay more high-ranking “tigers” and swat more flies. The CCDI said it opened probes last year against 92 “centrally managed cadres,” or senior officials, whose appointments are vetted by the party’s top personnel department. It is the highest annual tally disclosed so far during Xi’s rule.

Xi has signaled that the purges are central to his vision of a continuous “self-revolution” that keeps the party potent and pure. The risk, however, is that the crackdown also reveals how corruption remains widespread despite the constant cleansing.

“Hunting tigers allowed Xi to position himself as a populist attacking corrupt enemies of the people,” said Wedeman, the Georgia State University professor. “But the tiger hunt has dragged on for so long that I suspect the appeal of retributive justice has now worn thin. It thus might make sense to start ‘squashing ants.’ ”

The CCDI launched its crackdown on petty graft in April 2024, with a commitment to “tear openings, lift lids and dig up roots.” CCDI inspectors fanned out across China to supervise the effort, directly investigating 3,430 cases of low-level graft last year.

“While grassroots-level corruption is small, the evil is widespread and deep,” the CCDI’s official magazine said. “The accumulation of ‘one bite here, another bite there’ can add up to something quite shocking.”

The crackdown has fallen heavily on the rank and file. Some 741,000 people on the two lowest tiers of administrative rank as categorized by the CCDI were disciplined in 2024, accounting for 83% of the total number of punished personnel. The number of such “ordinary cadres,” rural and enterprise workers as well as other personnel penalized last year marked a roughly 48% jump from the 2023 total.

Authorities have also sharpened scrutiny on what they call hedonistic behavior. Nearly 66,000 people were punished last year for breaching rules on taking or giving gifts and expensive specialty goods, more than double the 2023 total. The number of people penalized for improperly dining on public money as well as mishandling subsidies and welfare handouts also rose sharply last year.

In October, Beijing also ordered a yearlong effort to curb corruption in the funeral-services industry. The issue drew widespread attention last summer after the grieving mother of a 3-year-old child that died of cancer was reportedly billed 13,800 yuan for flowers in the vigil room.

Some local governments pressed the campaign’s populist messaging by touting their success in recouping embezzled assets.

In February, state media said party enforcers in the southern region of Guangxi had returned assets worth 1.66 billion yuan to the masses over the past year, while promoting the disbursement of more than 6.5 billion yuan in unpaid subsidies and other handouts.

Party inspectors in the inland megacity of Chongqing, meanwhile, said they recovered about 1.3 billion yuan in economic losses from grassroots graft over the past year. The city’s top discipline inspector, Song Yijia, promised to achieve more in the year ahead.

The goal, Song said, is to “let the masses feel a greater sense of fulfillment, a more sustainable sense of happiness and a sounder sense of security.”

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com