A note on sourcing: The numbers and names in this brief come from the CCP's own communique and official notices. Treat them as the regime's own claims: I can check its arithmetic, not its honesty. Where something comes from a tip, I tell you whose it is. Where something is my own analysis, I say so. CCP state media is quoted only as a record of what the regime claims.
1. What official media will never tell you
CCP state broadcaster CCTV's Xinwen Lianbo has already shown you rows of men in dark suits raising their hands in perfect unison. The communique tells you the CCP's Fifth Plenum "fully affirmed" the work of the CCP's Politburo, that the Party has "fundamentally reversed" lax governance, and that it has "eliminated serious hidden dangers within the Party, the state and the military." That is the CCP's claim, in its own words.
What official media will not dwell on is that the same communique quietly admits one in four seats in that hall belonged to someone who wasn't there.
They will not tell you that the Party had to raid its bench of alternates again to keep the front rows looking full. They will not tell you that Xi Jinping's personal secretary of more than two decades has been expelled. And they will not explain why several men who are publicly known to be under investigation were neither present nor expelled. They simply vanished from the arithmetic.
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