China's Communist Party opened its fifth plenum on Monday as President Xi Jinping seeks to consolidate control ahead of an expected fourth term.

The closed-door gathering of the 20th Central Committee runs through Thursday in Beijing. It focuses on a draft document about "full and rigorous party self-governance," according to state news agency Xinhua. The session addresses challenges including governing capacity, complacency, and corruption.

Analysts view the meeting as the last major gathering before the 2027 party congress, where Xi is widely expected to secure another five-year term as party leader. He removed presidential term limits in 2018.

The plenum comes amid extensive purges that have thinned leadership ranks. Eight Central Committee seats are vacant, and attendance is projected at its lowest since Mao Zedong's death in 1976. Of the 44 military-affiliated full members elected in 2022, 42 have been purged or disappeared.

Xi delivered a work report and outlined priorities in a recent Qiushi journal article. These include enforcing party decisions with uncontested authority, placing cadre power in an "institutional cage," and sustaining the anti-graft campaign indefinitely.

The session signals continuity in Xi's approach to party discipline while preparing the ground for personnel changes at next year's congress. No major promotions or succession hints are anticipated.

Kerry Brown, director of King's College London's Lau China Institute, noted that the plenum will present Xi as in firm command to dispel doubts about his fitness to continue.

The meeting underscores Xi's dominance over the world's largest political party, which has more than 101 million members. It follows a pattern of using plenums to reinforce ideological uniformity and policy direction.