For years, the secrecy surrounding Xi Jinping’s campaign against corruption has provided fertile ground for political gossip in China. Now that speculation is taking a more organised and commercial form, with underground online groups selling purported information about officials under scrutiny and those who may soon face investigation.
Across China’s tightly controlled internet, authorities are repeatedly shutting down groups and websites that claim to offer access to leaked information about impending investigations, according to a recent report by Banyuetan, a magazine published by the official Xinhua News Agency. The groups operate in an environment where even apparently ordinary information about a government official can acquire significance because of the secrecy surrounding the Communist Party’s disciplinary machinery.
Membership is generally sold for a modest fee, while access to more exclusive chat rooms promising more valuable information can cost as much as 399 yuan ($59), the report said. The information itself is often deliberately cryptic. A cadre’s resume may suddenly appear without explanation, while an official’s name can be disguised through homophones. Operators also continually move members between different chat rooms in an effort to evade monitoring.
The reliability of such information varies sharply. Banyuetan said some accounts manufacture allegations to attract attention, prompting police in the southwestern province of Guizhou to close a number of sites. Yet some tips appear to originate within the government itself, raising questions about the circulation of confidential personnel information among officials and their associates.
One case cited by Banyuetan involved a low-ranking cadre in Guizhou who obtained personnel information and then worked with six relatives to operate nine WeChat accounts intended to increase their online follower count. The episode illustrates how information that might otherwise remain inside official channels can become part of an informal network of influence, attention and speculation.
There is no indication that the trade is being used to profit directly from predicting the downfall of particular officials, as has happened through other forms of political betting and speculation elsewhere. But its emergence reflects the anxiety surrounding Xi’s anti-graft campaign as it reaches deeper into the political and administrative 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.”
The demand for such information is increasing as Chinese politics approaches a particularly sensitive period. The Communist Party is entering its one-year countdown to next autumn’s leadership congress, where Xi may secure a precedent-defying fourth term and oversee a major personnel reshuffle. With officials competing for promotion ahead of the twice-a-decade conclave, information about who is rising, falling or coming under scrutiny becomes especially valuable.
For an official facing a possible investigation, advance information could provide an opportunity to prepare a defence. For an ambitious cadre, knowledge of impending personnel changes could help in cultivating relationships that might shape a career. For investors, an early indication that a provincial leader is being scrutinised could provide time to reduce exposure to assets associated with companies linked to that official.
“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 did not respond to faxed requests for comment.
Xi vowed to take down both “tigers” and “flies” — high and low ranking officials — shortly after assuming power 14 years ago. His stated objective was to clean up the Communist Party after what he regarded as decades of disciplinary drift during China’s transformation towards a market-oriented economy.
The scale of the campaign has now reached unprecedented levels. China’s disciplinary authorities probed 983,000 officials last year, including 181 senior officials who were directly managed by the central government. Both figures were records. With the campaign showing no sign of slowing, speculation about potential investigations has increasingly spread across Chinese social media, in some cases long before formal announcements 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 discussion of Yi’s possible 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 fuelled by investigations involving personnel perceived as being linked to him.
In China’s political system, an official’s unexplained absence from public political events can be an early indication of trouble. Months later, authorities may announce that the cadre is suspected of “serious violations of discipline and law”, without providing details while an investigation proceeds.
Investigations involving Communist Party officials can be particularly opaque because party members are generally dealt with first through the Communist Party’s own disciplinary system. Cases involving suspected criminal offences may subsequently be transferred to prosecutors, often after party sanctions have already been announced.
The paid chat rooms appear to take this process a step further, attempting to identify officials before any public indication of their possible downfall. Bloomberg News could not gain access to such groups online or independently verify the reports.
The Fifth Plenum scheduled for October is expected to focus on disciplinary issues and draw on the “valuable lessons” of the anti-corruption campaign, according to the readout of the Politburo’s July meeting. The closed-door gathering is expected to confirm the removal of senior officials from the party’s Central Committee and elevate alternate members to fill vacancies.
The meeting is also expected to provide clues about the qualities Xi will reward when selecting his next cohort in 2027, with loyalty, discipline and the ability to carry out his priorities likely to be important considerations. Such political manoeuvring is likely to sustain demand for information presented as official leaks, even as authorities attempt to suppress the networks distributing it.
For regulators, the coded nature of the posts creates a difficult legal and practical problem. Publishing a publicly available official resume is not itself illegal, nor does it necessarily amount to spreading a rumour or leaking a state secret. Police may also lack sufficient information about a confidential investigation to establish whether an online claim is false.
The result is a market that is partly generated by the political system’s own secrecy. The less that is publicly known about internal investigations and personnel decisions, the greater the space for rumours, coded clues and purported leaks to flourish.
“The more sensational the claim, the more attention it attracts,” said Thomas of Asia Society Policy Institute. “Sticking to the facts quickly becomes dull when so little is known about internal maneuvering in Beijing compared with democratic political systems.”
