China Indicts Former Politburo Member in Widening Purges

A former Politburo member of the Chinese regime has been indicted on bribery charges, according to state-run media, amid Beijing’s purges that have reached a scale unseen in decades.Ma Xingrui, 67, was accused of abusing his former positions at China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation in Guangdong Province and in the city of Shenzhen, and as a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo to secure benefits for others in exchange for bribes, state-run media outlet Xinhua reported, citing the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.Ma is among the most senior Party officials to have faced corruption charges in the CCP’s deepening political cleansing.Shortly after taking power in late 2012, Chinese leader Xi Jinping launched the nationwide drive to root out corruption and disloyalty, leading to the downfall of his once-powerful political rivals.The campaign has regained momentum in recent years, ousting dozens of generals. At the Politburo, the CCP’s second-most-powerful body, two members have been purged aside from Ma. Even those within Xi’s inner circle have found themselves ensnared in the sweeping drive, sparking speculation about political infighting among Party elites.Beijing disclosed in April that Ma had been placed under investigation by the Party’s top anti-graft agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.Ma was expelled from the Party and removed from all public duties in July. Authorities said his alleged offenses include nepotism, bribery, and paying for sexual favors, and that he and his family accepted large amounts of money and gifts.The Nov. 5 report didn’t offer a specific figure for his alleged corruption. Prosecutors said Ma had accepted “particularly large ​amounts” of bribes, Xinhua reported.The announcement of Ma’s indictment came a week after Beijing confirmed his expulsion at a major political gathering. Known as the fifth plenum, the closed-door meeting also confirmed the expulsion of 33 senior Party officials, a record, including former Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia, once the country’s most senior general and a former Politburo member.Xinhua reported on Nov. 5 that the indictment against Ma was filed by local prosecutors with the Intermediate People’s Court in Yichang, a city in central China’s Hubei Province.Ma, an aerospace engineer, was once seen as a rising star on China’s political stage, spending more than a decade working in China’s defense industry. Before being transferred to provincial posts, he briefly served as vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and headed China’s National Space Administration.He earned a doctorate in mechanics from China’s Harbin Institute of Technology in 1988 and began working at the university after graduation. The institution is one of China’s “Seven Sons of National Defense,” a group of seven universities with longstanding ties to the country’s military and defense industries.Ma also served as Party secretary of China’s far-western region of Xinjiang from 2021 to 2025. In March 2024, he described the “sinicization” of Islam in the Muslim-majority region as inevitable.The U.S. government has determined that the Chinese regime is committing “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang. The determination cited the detention of more than 1 million Muslims and the use of forced labor, forced sterilization, and torture.A 2022 U.N. human rights office report found credible evidence of torture in the region’s detention facilities and cited allegations of sexual and gender-based violence. It said the extent of arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities may amount to crimes against humanity.In 2023, then-Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chaired the House Select Committee on the CCP, sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken and then-Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, urging them to consider imposing sanctions on Ma and other CCP officials over their alleged involvement in human rights abuses and forced labor in Xinjiang.