In this chapter, I analyze the methodology of the Party’s anticorruption program under Xi Jinping. This program has two goals. The first is to shock and awe. This goal has been achieved successfully through the anti-corruption campaign in 2012-2017, which is attributable to two main factors: leadership qualities of both Xi himself and the campaign’s chief director Wang Qishan and the institutional infrastructure provided by the Party’s disciplinary system that had been built by Xi’s predecessors. The campaign’s success also shows that the institutional performance of the Party is susceptible to leadership influence, under which the same tools, devices, and mechanisms can be employed and exploited to different effects. The second goal of Xi’s anti-corruption program is to provide long-term solutions to some of the perpetuating problems of the Party’s disciplinary system. This reform marks a significant transformation in the Party-state relationship: instead of undermining the state for its own preservation, the Party now strengthens its political governance by empowering the state and drawing legitimacy from it. Lastly, I also discuss two recent developments: the gradual decline of Wang Qishan’s influence and the retraction of power from the CCDI.

Authoritarian regimes must grapple with a fundamental source of instability that a significant redistribution of power, often unseen or only partially observed, can radically alter the incentives of regime insiders and overturn initially stable equilibria (Acemoglu et al. 2008). Although institutional features such as authoritarian legislatures and a ruling party can alleviate the incentives to usurp the incumbent leader to some extent, especially among lower-level officials (Gandhi 2008; Svolik 2012), they cannot fundamentally remove the incentives to grab power forcefully in the top echelon of these regimes. For one, one-party states by design entrust enormous power in the hands of the top few officials or even in the hands of one person. For ambitious officials just one layer below the very top facing a low probability of ordinary promotion, the reward for achieving an extra step upward can be enormous and can justify a risky gamble, especially if an external shock leads to a significant redistribution of power. Even for those who are already in the top echelon of the ruling party, a gamble to break the existing power-sharing equilibrium can reap enormous rewards as the power and resources of authoritarian colleagues are consolidated into one’s hands. Knowing the dangers of these possibilities, authoritarian leaders also have the incentives to preempt potentially threatening colleagues by removing them from power with coercive measures. In the absence of credible constitutional frameworks or electoral pressure to stop the actions of the top leadership, the stable façade of authoritarian politics can quickly descend into coups, purges, and assassinations.