China's Communist Party has begun a four-day closed-door meeting in Beijing to tighten discipline within its ranks, a year before president Xi Jinping is expected to secure a fourth term as party leader.
The meeting, known as a plenum, brings together the roughly 300 members of the party's Central Committee, the largest of its top decision-making bodies, and runs until Thursday.
It is the fifth since the current committee was chosen in 2022.
Mr Xi opened it on Monday by briefing members on a draft document on "full and rigorous party self-governance", which state news agency Xinhua said addresses the challenges facing the party, including growing its governing capacity, guarding against complacency and fighting corruption, his signature campaign.
In a January speech published by state media before the plenum, Mr Xi criticised "two-faced" officials who appear to comply with orders but "inwardly resist", are "politically opportunistic" and pursue "individualism", and he said inspections and audits had found failures to comply and improper execution.
Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, a US think-tank, expects demands for tighter scrutiny of public spending and major projects, more use of technology to uncover corruption, and tougher consequences for officials who fail to deliver on Xi's priorities, AP reported.
This year's plenum is expected to have the lowest turnout since Mao Zedong's death in 1976, according to AFP, because of Mr Xi's purges, with eight of the Central Committee's seats vacant.
The Asia Society expects 291 of the 376 full and alternate members to attend, or 77 per cent.
Only 168 of the 205 full members came to last year's plenum, the lowest attendance of the post-Mao era, according to Brookings Institution, a US think-tank.
The anti-corruption drive has toppled five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission, the party's top armed forces body, leaving only Mr Xi and vice chairman Zhang Shengmin.
The plenum could appoint new members, the party could wait until next year's party congress to fill the vacancies, or Mr Xi might restructure the party's control over the military.
Only a plenum can repopulate the commission, so this is being seen as Mr Xi's last chance to do so before the congress. Of the 44 military officers elected to the Central Committee in 2022, only 17 remain, Brookings said.
Few policy surprises are expected, with major issues largely settled at earlier meetings.
"The plenum will present Xi as in control, and able to continue his command," Kerry Brown, director of King's College London's Lau China Institute, told Reuters.
"It is likely everything will be centred on him, to dispel any rumours or doubts about his physical fitness and ability to continue in his role."
He said "appearances will matter as much, if not more, than substance". Hints at a successor are unlikely.
Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in London, told AP the plenum was a chance to ensure rising generations of officials "share Xi's assessment of the opportunities and risks China faces".
Mr Xi's 14-year anti-corruption campaign has purged thousands of officials, including dozens of Central Committee members. Critics say the purges of the armed forces' top ranks undermine combat readiness, but the party has portrayed the campaign as regenerative, saying the military must "bathe in flames and be forged anew".
The meeting takes place as China's economy struggles with weak domestic spending and a long crisis in its property sector, and as relations with the United States remain turbulent.
