PRC state media confirmed the purge of top senior official Ma Xingrui in a report on July 14. Xinhua News Agency announced that Ma, a former Politburo member and Party secretary of Xinjiang, was expelled from public office and stripped of his Party membership following the Politburo’s review of his case on June 30.
Xinhua said that Ma was found to have “lost his ideals and beliefs,” gave up “his political conviction,” “betrayed the party’s principles and original mission,” and “seriously violated political discipline and rules.”
Political violations aside, Ma was accused of serious corruption. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection noted that Ma had “improperly accepted gifts and money, helped relatives buy houses at discounted prices” and partook in “power-for-sex and money-for-sex transactions.” Ma had “distorted public power [entrusted to him] into a tool for personal gain, using his position to seek benefits for others in business operations, project contracting and job promotions.” Also, Ma “neglected to supervise and manage the serious violations of discipline and law and suspected crimes committed by his staff,” as well as intervened in personnel decisions, “seeking benefits for others in cadre selection and appointment, and improperly arranging jobs for others, personally and through relatives.”
The CCP authorities officially announced an investigation into Ma Xingrui in April 2026. Ma had noticeably dropped out of public view since November 2025, missing several important political meetings. This drove speculation in the China-watching community that Ma was in trouble.
Ma is the fourth sitting Politburo member to be investigated during Xi Jinping’s tenure. The prior three were Chongqing Party secretary Sun Zhengcai, Central Military Commission vice chairman He Weidong, and CMC vice chair Zhang Youxia.
Extension of Beijing’s defense industry purge
Politburo members typically enjoy an informal layer of political immunity and are rarely ever removed while in office. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, very few sitting Politburo members have been publicly expelled and criminally prosecuted solely for conventional corruption or personal misconduct. Ma Xingrui’s downfall suggests that he was deemed guilty of serious transgressions, including very severe corruption that undermined Xi Jinping’s policy objectives, political disloyalty to Xi and Party Central, serious misgovernance while he was serving in provincial government, and potential entanglement with Xi’s political enemies, including prior association with rival “cliques and factions.”
Ma was an aerospace expert before entering politics, spending 14 years at China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation and eventually becoming general manager. When Ma was at CASC, Jiang Mianheng, the elder son of Xi’s top political foe Jiang Zemin, served as vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and had a leadership role in major space projects. Publicly available information does not indicate that Ma and Jiang were connected. However, anti-corruption investigators could potentially establish a link to justify the Xi leadership’s political charges against Ma.
The anti-corruption authorities would likely have an easier time establishing Ma’s corruption. During the Jiang Zemin-Hu Jintao era, China’s aerospace and defense industries were regarded as a “state within a state” and operated with a high degree of autonomy. There was a vacuum of oversight into these industries due to their close connection to national defense, spending, procurement, and technology transfers in the regime. While he was general manager of CASC, Ma Xingrui would oversee annual R&D and production budgets amounting to hundreds of billions of yuan. Overseas Chinese language media cited audits and internal whistleblowing in pointing to widespread issues during the period when Ma was in charge, including inflated costs, falsified accounting, and collusion with private contractors. These issues would have likely been unearthed and counted against Ma as the Xi leadership assessed the damage to the PRC’s military modernization program and the defense industry in the aftermath of the serious corruption scandal involving the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force in 2023.
It is possible that Ma Xingrui was directly involved in the PLARF’s corruption. Ma oversaw national military production and R&D when he was vice minister of industry and information technology and director of the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. Had investigators found that the PLARF’s equipment quality problems originated with state-owned defense enterprises, then Ma would naturally be held accountable for problems with the PLARF.
Implications of Ma’s purge for CCP elite politics
Ma Xingrui’s downfall is noteworthy because the trajectory of his official career suggested that he was a Xi Jinping loyalist who was being groomed for higher office. Some overseas Chinese media outlets and commentators have argued that the purge of Xi “confidant” Ma is a sign that Xi is “losing power.”
A closer examination of Ma’s career, however, shows no special connection between Ma and Xi. Prior to assuming power in 2012, Xi had not yet established his faction. Neither was Xi able to fully sway personnel arrangements in his first term given the dominance of the Jiang faction at the time. Meanwhile, Ma moved into government from the aerospace industry in 2012, and was almost immediately “parachuted” into the Guangdong provincial government the next year. It is unclear how much influence Xi had over Ma’s deployment.
Ma did climb the official ranks after Xi consolidated power in his first term and had greater control over personnel issues. Ma’s ascension, however, appears to have more to do with Xi’s preference for having “technocrats” (i.e. officials with backgrounds in state-owned enterprises or research institutions) in key positions because they are perceived as lacking clear factional affiliations rather than because they are Xi loyalists to begin with. Notably, Ma did not receive special promotion or treatment while being elevated in the officialdom, unlike those who were actually longtime Xi allies such as Cai Qi or Li Qiang.
Xi’s selection of Ma for key roles beyond his first term does suggest that the former considered the latter a loyalist at one point. That being said, the anti-corruption purges after the 20th Party Congress indicate that Xi will not protect loyalists if they are found to be especially corrupt and politically wanting. Xi is likely “depersonalizing” his purges in a bid to boost governing efficiency, eliminate political risks, and consolidate power to higher degrees. The “depersonalization” of Xi’s anti-corruption and “self-revolution” campaigns mean that anyone who is considered to lack “absolute loyalty” to Xi (including acting or having acted in ways that undermined Xi’s policies) are purge targets, not just factional enemies and their associates. It follows that officials with personal ties to Xi and his family, as well as long-time political confidants, could potentially be removed if they are deemed to be disloyal to Xi and Party Central, undermined the “CMC Chairman Responsibility System” and jeopardized military modernization goals, or engaged in corruption so serious that regime security is threatened.
Ma’s expulsion from the Party and public office also signals the failure of Xi’s experiment with appointing “technocrats” to top positions. For one, “technocrats” appear to be no less resistant to systemic corruption after they enter government. In sectors like aerospace and defense where oversight is weak, technical expertise can even become a sophisticated tool for disguising corruption and manipulating procurement processes. Also, the loyalty of “technocrats” to the Party “core” is likely to be more transactional than ideological given their previous “independence” from the CCP system. When the system faces pressure, the governing “pragmatism” of “technocrats” could be interpreted as political opportunism.
The removal of Ma Xingrui and other perceived Xi loyalists who are hangovers from the Jiang era (such as Zhang Youxia) suggests that the Xi leadership is striving to ensure that the next Politburo and its Standing Committee is “politically pure.” Beijing is likely to regard professional competence as less important than political devotion to Xi in evaluating cadres for higher office. The endless political tests stemming from Xi’s effort to “rebalance” the CCP system are likely to create more rather than fewer problems and inefficiencies in Xi’s governance.
