As the annual session of the National People's Congress of China, China's top legislature equivalent to Korea's National Assembly, opened on the 5th, attendance at this year's opening ceremony was reported to be the lowest since Chinese President Xi Jinping took power.
Bloomberg News, citing Zhao Leji, chair of the National People's Congress of China Standing Committee, reported that 2,765 delegates attended the opening ceremony that day, while 113 delegates were absent. The 113 absentees do not include those who have already been formally stripped of their National People's Congress of China delegate status.
Except for 2022 (161 absences), when strict COVID-19 control measures were in place, this is the highest number of absences since Xi took office in 2012. This year's absence rate is 4%, double the average (2%) during Xi's tenure. While there can be various reasons for missing China's largest annual political event, such as illness, Bloomberg said Zhao did not specify the reasons.
The current number of National People's Congress of China delegates is 2,878, down 99 from 2023. The presidium has 167 members, down nine from 176 last year. Notably, Ma Xingrui, a member of the Politburo who was recently rumored to have fallen from power, was also left out of the presidium. Formerly the party secretary of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, he was dismissed last year. He appeared in public through September to October last year but disappeared thereafter. He also did not appear at the opening ceremony of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference the previous day.
Bloomberg said, "As Xi carries out a sweeping crackdown within the Communist Party to root out disloyalty and corruption, the increase in absences at the opening ceremony could be because some have become targets of investigation," adding, "This could suggest a purge on a much larger scale than is publicly known."