President Xi Jinping has pledged to “uproot sick trees” in the anti-corruption fight, according to a transcript of a speech published by the Communist Party’s flagship magazine ahead of a major party conclave later this month. The warning appeared on Thursday in the magazine Qiushi, which carried fresh details of a speech Xi delivered in January at the fifth plenary session of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the party’s top anti-corruption watchdog. The speech contained...

For a decade, former Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan stood out as a political survivor while colleague after close colleague fell in China’s far-reaching anti-corruption campaign. Throughout that time, including his seven years as the megacity’s mayor from 2009 to 2016, Huang was seen as a “tumbler” in Chinese politics – a weighted doll that wobbles but never falls over. The nickname was well-deserved – he served under six municipal Communist Party secretaries, watching two of them – Bo Xilai and...