The Communist Party of China expelled Ma Xingrui from its ranks and dismissed him from all public offices on 14 July 2026, after an investigation by the party’s top disciplinary body found him guilty of serious corruption and disciplinary violations. The 67-year-old former Xinjiang party chief becomes the third member of the 24-seat Politburo to be purged since the current party term began in 2022, a rarity in recent decades. State media announced that his case will be transferred to prosecutors, with all illicit gains to be confiscated.

According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, Ma “lost his ideals and beliefs,” betrayed party principles, and engaged in “power-for-sex and money-for-sex transactions,” helped relatives buy property at below-market prices, and accepted large bribes in exchange for business favours and job promotions. The announcement frames the expulsion as part of President Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign, which since 2012 has punished hundreds of thousands of officials. Viewed from Beijing, the drive is a necessary purge to maintain party discipline and remove “tigers” blocking national development. Analysts in Moscow note that the campaign also serves to consolidate Xi’s control over the party and state apparatus, with public announcements of investigations almost invariably ending in guilty verdicts.

Ma’s tenure as party secretary of Xinjiang from 2021 to 2025 places his downfall in a sensitive geopolitical context. The region has been under intense security crackdowns targeting the Uyghur Muslim minority, measures that Western governments and human rights organisations have condemned. A 2022 report by the UN high commissioner for human rights cited possible crimes against humanity. Media in Jakarta and Nairobi highlight that Ma’s removal does not signal any policy shift in Xinjiang, but his expulsion removes a figure directly associated with those policies. In European capitals, the purge is also read as part of a broader shake-up of the defence and aerospace sectors, where several of Ma’s former subordinates have been investigated.

The expulsion of Ma, an aerospace engineer who once oversaw China’s manned space programme and later rose to the Politburo, underscores the reach of the anti-graft campaign into the military-industrial complex. Alongside him, two former vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission, He Weidong and Zhang Youxia, have also been expelled in this term. The party’s disciplinary body stated that Ma failed to show sincere remorse during the investigation. His case is expected to proceed swiftly through the judicial system, with a conviction and sentencing likely in the coming months, following a pattern in which publicly announced investigations almost always lead to harsh punishments.