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William Zheng

The South China Morning Post has launched a major data project diving into President Xi Jinping’s signature anti-graft campaign. In the second part of an accompanying series, William Zheng examines how the campaign has targeted corrupt officials outside the Chinese capital and long after retirement.
It used to be an easy choice for senior Chinese officials deciding between a local government position and a post at the same level in Beijing.
Most would choose the assignment outside the capital, as fewer supervisors around meant more clout and a bigger say in local affairs. As the Chinese saying goes: “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away.”
But that may no longer be true under President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, which has sought to target graft in all corners of China’s massive bureaucracy.
In fact, according to a tally by the South China Morning Post, among the most senior tier of officials targeted in the anti-corruption campaign between 2013 and 2025, 60 per cent were taken down while in regional government roles.
According to the same tally, the median age of the officials targeted by the country’s top anti-graft agency was 60 – the usual retirement age for those at the deputy provincial rank.
The SCMP looked at all publicly known officials targeted by the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Most of them belonged to a pool of officials known as “centrally managed cadres”, meaning they typically held ranks at the deputy ministerial level or above. A smaller number of them held slightly lower ranks but occupied sensitive positions in important sectors.


Unlike their subordinates, who are managed and supervised by the local branches of the party’s organisation and disciplinary agency, these senior officials are under direct management by the Communist Party’s Central Organisation Department, its top personnel body.
The tally found that the drive had inflicted a heavy toll across regions and policy areas, with a strong focus on officials outside the capital city. Anti-corruption agencies have also dug deeper into the archives, netting officials after their retirement.
A wider net
The data shows that Xi’s anti-corruption campaign quickly reached its first peak in 2014, when 40 senior officials were ensnared by the CCDI – more than double the number from the previous year. After that, the number of “tigers” hunted declined to a low of 19 in 2020.
The anti-corruption machinery regained its speed after 2020. The number of top officials caught by the CCDI reached a new high of 65 in 2025.
Regional government officials made up nearly 60 per cent of those caught, while 20 per cent were in the central government or party bodies in Beijing. A smaller percentage held positions in state-owned enterprises.
The heavy concentration of corrupt officials in local governments explains the need to send inspection groups to every region to keep local senior officials on their toes, according to a Chinese political scientist who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
For every centrally managed cadre in the central government, there are 1.2 such cadres in regional government, according to another Chinese political scientist, citing estimates by academics. So while there are similar numbers of central and regional senior cadres, the data indicates that those in regional government were more likely to be found corrupt.
“It seems to suggest a typical scenario: when the cat’s far away, the mice will play,” said the scholar, who also asked to remain anonymous.
“That is why Beijing sends so many inspection groups to various regions to root out local problems.
“In China’s opaque party-state system, local party secretaries are very powerful. They can decide on almost everything under their jurisdiction. Only Beijing’s inspectors can rein them in,” he said, referring to task forces dispatched from the capital, which have been institutionalised under Xi and are widely credited with unearthing evidence of corruption by several powerful regional chiefs.
No safe landing
There was once an unspoken understanding that when an official reached retirement age and stepped down from frontline duties, he was generally immune from prosecution for past misdeeds.
But the data shows that this idea of a “safe landing” has been thoroughly shattered by the anti-corruption fight.
The relentless pursuit of officials who have reached or are approaching retirement has become a defining feature of China’s modern disciplinary apparatus.
This was made clear in a People’s Daily commentary in December 2015, which declared: “There is no ‘safe haven’ for corruption, and retirement is not a lifesaver for corrupt officials. Even if they have been retired for 10 or 20 years, or even if they are lying in a hospital bed, the corrupt will be condemned and punished.”
According to the SCMP data project, most of the officials were at the tail end or high point of their careers, with 34.6 per cent aged 60-64 years and 33 per cent aged 55-59.
Of the centrally managed cadres facing investigation during the period, 33 per cent were targeted after they left office, and 19.5 per cent were pursued while they held ceremonial positions as they neared retirement.
While the concept of “lifelong responsibility” was enshrined in party doctrine in 2016, the escalating trend of officials brought down during semi-retirement or retirement only appeared after 2020, when the anti-corruption fight ratcheted up.


Xie Maosong, a senior researcher at Tsinghua University’s National Institute of Strategic Studies, said the top leaders in Beijing were trying “very hard” to avoid the “revolving door” problem seen in Western countries, where there is frequent movement between government roles and the private sector.
“Supervising officials’ retirement will rein in conflicts of interest. Can a regulator truly be tough on a corporation if they are secretly hoping that the same corporation will hire them as advisers in a few years?” Xie said.
He added that the revolving door practice meant companies could hire former insiders who “know exactly how to bypass regulations or secure government contracts, leaving smaller competitors and the general public at a disadvantage”.
“Such a top inner circle will ruin public trust. It creates a perception that the government is run by a cosy, insular club of elites looking out for each other rather than the public interest,” he said.
Of the 19 senior officials investigated in 2020, only seven – or 36.8 per cent – were retired or in semi-retirement. Last year, 70.8 per cent of the 65 “tigers” facing CCDI investigations had left active duty.
The SCMP analysis also found that in recent years, CCDI investigators have dug further into the past to bring down retired senior officials, targeting tigers that have been retired longer.
In 2013, less than a year had passed on average between an official’s retirement and his downfall.
By 2025, that gap had expanded to just over five years. Former vice-minister of state security Gao Yichen was among those detained last year – a record 15 years after his retirement.
Deng Yuwen, former deputy editor of the Study Times, the official publication of the Central Party School, the party’s top ideological training institute, said this retroactive approach gained national prominence in 2020, when Inner Mongolia autonomous region launched a massive, two-decade audit of its coal sector.
Since then, the model has been adopted by other provinces and applied to various sectors, including the judicial system, prisons and financial institutions – in some cases scrutinising behaviour going back three decades.
“In many political systems, retired officials often retain immense shadow power through established networks of proteges and loyalists. China is not different,” Deng said. “They frequently used this influence to meddle in local governance, steer lucrative state contracts to family members, or protect their allies.”
“By prosecuting retired senior officials, the CCDI can systematically uproot these entrenched patronage networks, and eliminate the ‘futures-style corruption’, which is granting favour when in position and getting paid after retirement,” he added.
“Subjecting retired officials to investigations ensures that power remains centralised around the current core leadership, effectively deterring retired cadres from forming factions or expressing different political views.
“It also sends a powerful psychological message to officials who are currently serving. If retirement is no longer a safe haven, the perceived risk of engaging in corruption while in office increases dramatically.”
Tigers in the financial sector
Another group targeted has been the bosses of China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) – accounting for 10 per cent of those investigated – along with state bankers and financial supervisors, who made up around 6 per cent of cases. Most of these arrests have been made in the past five years, as Beijing has cracked down on systemic risks in SOEs and the sprawling financial sector.
The deeply entrenched graft within Chinese SOEs, state-run banks, insurance giants and sovereign wealth funds could jeopardise national economic and financial stability, making them a focus of Beijing’s anti-corruption watchdog in recent years, Xie said.
“Chinese SOEs and national banks carry way more than economic goals. They are critical channels to realise Beijing’s economic priorities, China’s technological independence, and financial stability,” Xie said.
He added that it was easy for bosses of state-owned financial institutions to take “a lot of money in a very short period of time, because they handle the nation’s money”.
Two of the most extreme and harshly punished corruption cases in the past few years were related to the financial sector.
Lai Xiaomin, former chairman at the state-controlled China Huarong Asset Management, was executed in 2021 for taking 1.78 billion yuan (US$264.8 million) in bribes. His former associate, Bai Tianhui, who was a top executive of a China Huarong subsidiary, faced a similar fate last year after being convicted of taking bribes worth 1.1 billion yuan.
Their cases are among the few known executions of corrupt officials in China over the past decade.
Turning the blade inward
Beijing has also expanded its anti-graft crackdown to target the investigators themselves. As of last year, a total of 16 senior disciplinary officials had been brought down in the campaign, accounting for 3.5 per cent of the total.
A CCDI documentary in 2017 revealed details of several “moles” who traded confidential case information for bribes and contracts for family members, shielded corrupt allies and extorted the very targets they were supposed to investigate.
According to the documentary, Yuan Weihua, the deputy head of a CCDI inspection and supervision office, helped his father obtain contracts worth more than 1 billion yuan by leaking case information to top provincial officials.
To combat the corruption within the CCDI, Xi has called on the agency to “turn the blade inward” and aggressively cleanse its own ranks. In major speeches at the CCDI’s annual meetings in recent years, he repeatedly ordered the agency to establish an internal supervision system to cover all blind spots and conduct a thorough clean-up within the disciplinary apparatus.
“Those moles leaking invitation targets and progress can greatly hinder investigations. They are the reason some corrupt senior officials have harboured illusions, trying to get away with investigations without fully confessing their crimes,” Xie said.
There is no sign the CCDI’s internal corruption fight will ease. Li Xiaohong, a former senior disciplinary official in charge of national inspection, was put under investigation in June.
Dong Hong, who until 2018 was deputy leader of the CCDI’s central inspection team, was given a suspended death sentence in January 2022 for taking 463 million yuan in bribes.
The downfall of Li and Dong drew national attention because they were both former personal aides to Wang Qishan, the former Chinese vice-president who served as CCDI chief from 2012 to 2017. Wang is regarded as Xi’s most instrumental political ally in carrying out the first wave of the anti-corruption campaign.


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China’s anti-graft push has expanded to those who once felt shielded, from retired cadres and local bosses to the investigators themselves


China’s anti-graft push has expanded to those who once felt shielded, from retired cadres and local bosses to the investigators themselves.


.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}China’s anti-graft push has expanded to those who once felt shielded, from retired cadres and local bosses to the investigators themselves

China’s anti-graft push has expanded to those who once felt shielded, from retired cadres and local bosses to the investigators themselves