Xi’s Secretive Graft Purges Spawn Underground Market for Leaks
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The black box around Xi Jinping’s corruption crackdown has long fueled political gossip in China. Now, an underground market is emerging for selling purported secrets on who might be next to fall.
Across China’s tightly controlled internet, authorities are playing whack-a-mole to stop shadowy users who peddle access to groups claiming to leak details of which officials are under scrutiny, according to a recent report from Banyuetan, a magazine published by the official Xinhua News Agency.
Members are typically charged a small entry fee, with access to more exclusive chat rooms promising better tips fetching as much as 399 yuan ($59), the report said. Clues are often cryptic: A cadre’s resume is posted without explanation, or an official’s name appears disguised by homophones. To evade monitoring, operators constantly shuffle members into new rooms.
Not all the information is reliable — some accounts fabricate allegations to drive traffic, Banyuetan said, with police in the southwestern province of Guizhou closing a number of such sites. Some tips, however, appear to originate from government officials — pointing to disloyalty within the ranks. In one case cited by Banyuetan, a low-ranking cadre in Guizhou obtained personnel information, then worked with six relatives to run nine WeChat accounts with the aim of boosting their online follower count.
There’s no indication the tip trading is used to profit off predicting the downfall of any particular officials, a burgeoning new business elsewhere in the world. Still, the practice underscores the prevailing sense of anxiety among Chinese officials as Xi’s anti-graft purges reach into new corners of the system. Three of the 24 members appointed to the current Politburo have been ousted, while a sweeping military purge has left the world’s largest standing army with the fewest leaders since the 1970s.
“Every mid- and high-level official in China now must assume they bear some risk of being closely examined by anti-corruption authorities,” said Victor Shih, an expert on elite politics in China and professor at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s natural they would pay to obtain information about some of these potential investigations.”
Xi's Anti-Corruption Drive Continues to Expand
The number of punished personnel rose to a record last year
Note: 2026 data from January to June only.
Source: Central Commission for Discipline Inspection
The groups are flourishing as Chinese politics approaches a particularly sensitive period. The Communist Party is embarking on its one-year countdown to next autumn’s leadership congress, where Xi may secure a precedent-defying fourth term and preside over a personnel reshuffle. Officials will jostle for promotions ahead of that twice-a-decade conclave, only deepening the demand for inside information.
In theory, tips on an impending investigation can enable a targeted official to prepare their defense, or help an ambitious cadre cultivate the right relationships to shape their career. For investors, early warnings a provincial leader is under scrutiny provide time to offload any assets associated with exposed companies.
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“Advance knowledge of a promotion, investigation, or purge can be commercially valuable to companies trying to assess political exposure, manage government relations, and determine which official relationships remain viable,” said Neil Thomas, senior fellow on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “Cadres themselves also have strong incentives to understand personnel shifts that could affect their careers or political networks.”
The State Council Information Office, corruption watchdog Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the internet regulator Cyberspace Administration didn’t respond to faxed requests for comment.
Party discipline
Xi vowed to take down both “tigers” and “flies” — high and low ranking officials — shortly after assuming power 14 years ago. His goal was to clean up the Communist Party after decades of what he saw as disciplinary drift during the nation’s transformation toward a market-oriented economy.
The rumor market has emerged as the campaign reaches unprecedented scale: China’s disciplinary authorities probed 983,000 officials last year, including 181 senior officials who were directly managed by the central government. Both were records.
Xi's Third Term Sees More Senior Officials Removed for Graft
Note: 2026 data from January to June only.
Source: Central Commission for Discipline Inspection
With that initiative showing no sign of slowing, speculation has increasingly circulated on Chinese social media, long before the paid groups emerged — and sometimes with striking accuracy.
On the morning of Feb. 10, for example, China’s top graft buster announced an investigation into Yi Lianhong, a former Communist Party chief of Zhejiang province. Yet talk of Yi’s downfall had already circulated in regular chat groups for days.
One WeChat article said searches for Yi on the platform had risen sixfold two days earlier, following several previous surges since April 2025. The speculation was probably fueled by investigation of personnel seen as linked to him.
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