When observing Chinese Communist Party politics, one often notices not what is going on, but what is missing. In the case of the Fifth Plenum of the Communist Party of China (CPC), for example, in addition to the absence of a “successor,” it turns out that six of the 204 members of the Central Committee and 168 alternates were absent.
The six Central Committee members absent from the Fifth Plenum were Chen Quanguo, Party Secretary of Xinjiang Autonomous Region; Zhao Zongqi, Commander of the Western Theater; Liu Wanlong, Commander of Xinjiang Military Region; Wang Xiaodong, Governor of Hubei Province; Wang Yupu, Minister of Emergency Management; and Leng Sol, Director of the Institute of Party History and Documentation of the CPC Central Committee and a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.
It is worth noting that Leng Sol is under the jurisdiction of Wang Huning, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee in charge of ideology, and the recent appearance of Wang’s successor also seems to cast doubt on his retirement. As for the other five absent members of the Central Committee, it is intriguing to see why they had to miss the plenary session, an annual event of the Chinese Communist Party.
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