Xi tightens leash on officials’ boozing and lavish living

One of them died that afternoon, according to an official account, which didn’t state the cause of death. The officials at the lunch tried to hide the illicit consumption of alcohol, the account said, by paying off the deceased official’s family and omitting the drinking in their reports to superiors.

The Communist Party’s top disciplinary agency highlighted the incident amid a new campaign to denounce extravagant and profligate conduct within the party’s rank and file, underscoring Xi Jinping’s struggle to rein in what he sees as widespread hedonism in China’s bureaucracy.

“The party center has beaten drums and swung hammers, issued orders time and again," but some officials still “turned a deaf ear and showed no fear or awe," the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in its disclosure on the incident. “For such problems, we must insist on zero tolerance."

The CCDI said authorities have punished more than a dozen officials in relation to the Xinyang incident, with penalties including censure, probation, demotion, removal from positions and expulsion from the Communist Party.

The Chinese Communist Party’s top disciplinary agency has denounced misconduct within the party’s rank and file.

Beijing reinforced its message with updates to its frugality rules for party and state workers, published in May, adding provisions that included an explicit ban against serving alcohol, gourmet dishes and cigarettes at official meals.

Other clauses prohibit floral displays and elaborate backdrops at work meetings, and the purchase of extravagant equipment for events. The new rules, added to a 2013 frugality code, are meant to promote the view that “thrift is glorious."

Xi’s belt-tightening efforts underscore how China’s economic woes have reverberated across the country, with sluggish growth, a real-estate slump and a weak job market forcing many to adjust to doing more with less. Many local governments have been struggling under heavy debts for years.

Such difficulties have stoked public unrest and fueled grumbling over Xi’s stewardship of the world’s second-largest economy.

“Updating the frugality code will not solve Beijing’s fiscal challenges," said Neil Thomas, a fellow on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “But it reinforces Xi’s political control over the bureaucracy and burnishes his image as a leader who stands against corruption and excess, especially at a time when many ordinary Chinese are feeling economic pain."

Xi has been urging officials in recent years to “get used to living frugally" as part of a government belt-tightening campaign. He has ramped up a crackdown on petty corruption, which has targeted opulence, bribery and other misconduct by low-level bureaucrats that affect ordinary citizens.

The crackdown has driven disciplinary cases to record levels. The party punished nearly 313,000 people in 2024 for breaching the “eight-point regulations," a directive against frivolous and wasteful conduct that Xi enacted shortly after taking power in 2012. This was more than double the 2023 figure and 10 times the total in 2013, the first full year of Xi’s leadership, according to CCDI data.

“It is pretty clear that its decades-old anti-extravagance message is not getting through," said Andrew Wedeman, a professor at Georgia State University who studies governance and corruption issues in China. Despite the enforcement, “cadres will continue to skirt around those new rules and find ways to continue to engage in ‘research’—yanjiu," Wedeman said, referring to a Chinese phrase that also sounds like “tobacco and alcohol."

The latest drive against extravagance started in March, when Xi launched an ideological campaign requiring all party members to study the spirit of the party’s eight-point regulations.

The CCDI recommended a lengthy reading list, including four anthologies of Xi’s remarks on discipline and over a dozen sets of party regulations and directives, including rules against convening official meetings at scenic tourist spots and using public funds to buy fireworks for the Lunar New Year.

Then in May, the party published the updated frugality code, which included more detailed guidelines on how public money should be spent on government meetings, receptions, travel, offices and vehicles.

As well as preventing the display of floral and plant arrangements at work meetings, the new guidance bars officials from using government vehicles for private purposes and gambling while traveling abroad. Officials were also told to avoid arranging activities to welcome or send off visitors at airports, railroad stations and docks.

The new guidance also prohibits officials from carrying out lavish renovations of party and state facilities under the guise of repair work. Another provision requires officials to “resolutely prevent inefficient and ineffective investments."

“Xi wants to signal that the party leadership can detect and discipline cadres who are taking advantage of their positions," said Thomas at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

State media issued reassurances that the revised rules wouldn’t affect government salaries and are merely intended to end excessive workplace indulgences.

Authorities have also made a show of punishing miscreant officials, past and present, to soothe public resentment.

In one recent case, authorities in the southwestern city of Ya’an opened an investigation against a former bureaucrat after his 17-year-old daughter posted a photo of her wearing luxury earrings on social media.

The image sparked an uproar, with some users claiming that the earrings cost about 2.3 million yuan, equivalent to around $320,000. Others questioned how she could afford them, given that her father was once a civil servant.

State media reported in May that Ya’an authorities had uncovered alleged misconduct by the father during his time as a government worker from 2011 to 2017. Investigators accused him of illegally engaging in business activities and concealing the fact that he had a second child when applying to join the civil service, a violation of China’s one-child policy that was in force at the time.

The father’s alleged misconduct “will be dealt with seriously and in accordance with the law," state television said.

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com