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A Rising Star’s Abrupt Fall Shows Xi’s Crackdown on Overambitious Officials

Purges aimed at rooting out corruption and disloyalty push officials to focus on pleasing Beijing

When Jiang Duntao shot up the ranks to become the top Communist Party official in Zibo, China, in 2019, he moved fast, pivoting the local economy from heavy industries toward higher-end manufacturing and services—while raising debt and tapping private investment to fund the projects.

The city in eastern China reported strong economic growth under Jiang and went on to win viral fame as a vacation spot. State media portrayed Jiang’s pro-business policies as bold and dynamic, and he was quickly promoted.

But his career collapsed abruptly within a few years when the party accused him of saddling Zibo with onerous debt.

Jiang was “eager for quick success, and acted blindly and recklessly,” the party’s top disciplinary agency said in April when announcing his expulsion.

Such projects would have won plaudits in China’s go-go years of red-hot growth. But as the country struggles with a slowdown and enormous debt, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is cracking down on officials who try to boost their careers with flashy projects and rash policies. Such practices “exhaust the people and drain the treasury,” Xi said in February.

This turnaround is also exacerbating a culture of fear and uncertainty in the ranks of Chinese officialdom. The waves of purges aimed at rooting out corruption and disloyalty have pushed many officials to focus on finding ways to please Beijing and avoid punishment.

Some officials have responded by putting off decisions while awaiting clearer signals from higher-ups on what to do. Others have focused on traditional benchmarks such as economic growth, seeking high-profile investments and “prestige projects” to impress superiors. In some cases, bureaucrats resorted to ostentatious gestures and outright fraud, feigning adherence to unrealistic targets and masking underperformance.

Party authorities punished nearly 160,000 people for offenses related to policy inaction, recklessness or deceit last year, a 16% increase from the 2024 total, according to official data.

Such behavior has grown more troubling as China confronts economic problems ranging from sluggish demand to a depressed property market. Some analysts said Beijing exacerbated the problem by issuing looser economic targets and more-ambiguous demands—such as delivering “high-quality development”—which made officials less certain about how to implement Xi’s policies.

“Replacing a hard metric like growth with softer goals such as improving business confidence or social welfare is easier said than done,” said Lizzi Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Hard targets are at least visible and enforceable. Softer objectives are harder to measure and harder to embed in the cadre evaluation system.”

Party officials are trying to clarify Xi’s message through a new indoctrination campaign. The program features seminars, field trips and inspections emphasizing that party members must work to improve people’s lives instead of protecting their own careers.

Some agencies have party members read offenders’ confessions and watch documentaries depicting cases of self-serving officials who worked for their own gain. Beijing has also sent “central guidance teams,” typically led by retired senior officials, into some provincial governments, state agencies, businesses and universities to promote Xi’s ideas on how to be a conscientious official.

The party is naming and shaming offenders. One case featured a vice mayor in southwestern China who allegedly chased quick results by approving titanium plants and signing billions of yuan of investment deals without proper due diligence. Production at some plants was halted for regulatory violations, while less than 7% of the investment agreements he oversaw materialized, according to party authorities, who expelled the official and transferred his case to prosecutors.

Another case involved officials in the central China city of Leiyang who built an industrial park for making strollers. Party inspectors said these officials inflated reports on the park’s output, claiming that more than 60 enterprises had moved into the industrial park when it only had five businesses with a combined workforce of fewer than 100 people.

Beijing has tried to guide officials by directing them to study Xi’s ideas on what constitutes good political performance and how to make China’s economy more innovative, environmentally friendly and equitable.

Party publishers issued a series of guidebooks as required reading, including one title that listed 72 positive and 74 negative practices that officials should follow or avoid. It promoted positive practices such as visiting local communities more often, while negative behavior included “thinking that doing more means more mistakes, doing less means fewer mistakes.”

Jiang, the former Zibo party chief, appeared at first to be fulfilling the party’s wishes. He halved the number of chemical companies in the city to around 500 to reduce its reliance on older, more-polluting industries. He started projects to build higher-education and science hubs, as well as an “entrepreneurship and innovation valley.”

Aiming to rehabilitate Zibo’s image as an industrial backwater, Jiang promoted the city as a production center for precooked meals, aiming to “allow the ‘Zibo flavor’ to spread its fragrance around the world.” He promised to boost the city’s nightlife with new bars, cafes and music lounges—efforts that paid off when Zibo became the center of a barbecue craze in 2023 that drew tourists from across China.

Jiang became the party chief of a neighboring city in 2022 and became vice mayor of the inland megacity of Chongqing the next year.

But Zibo’s finances grew strained. The city’s debt by 2022 reached about 108 billion yuan, the equivalent of about $16 billion at current rates, double its levels in 2018—the year before Jiang was appointed as the city’s chief.

His fortunes turned abruptly in October, when the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced an investigation against him. Then, in April, the commission said the party had expelled Jiang and transferred his case to prosecutors. He couldn’t be reached for comment.

Party inspectors said Jiang set up government funds without proper assessments or consultation and allowed private entrepreneurs to abuse them, resulting in significant losses to state assets. He also allegedly raised large amounts of debt to fund prestige projects, even though he knew Zibo’s fiscal revenue couldn’t sustain such spending.

Jiang advocated the idea that “a government that doesn’t borrow is one that doesn’t act,” a notion that contradicts Xi’s calls for pursuing sustainable growth, the commission said. “He seized political achievements for personal gain and ultimately set back the party’s cause,” the commission said.