Xi Jinping orders absolute loyalty to Communist Party in corruption crackdown speech

President Xi Jinping said his sweeping anti-corruption crackdown remained "arduous and complicated" as he ordered absolute loyalty to the Communist Party at a meeting of its top anti-graft agency yesterday.

Xi also publicly referred to the case of the former security tsar Zhou Yongkang for the first time as he warned other would-be targets.

He vowed to maintain the intensity of the campaign and urged cadres to abide by both written and unwritten party rules surrounding discipline, as he addressed the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection's fifth plenum, which opened on Monday.

"Corruption has been reduced but it has not disappeared," Xinhua quoted Xi as saying. The party had yet to create an atmosphere in which officials were afraid and even incapable of corruption, he said.

The anti-graft mechanism still needed improvement, he said.

While reminding officials to act in line with both party rules and the law, Xi emphasised they should also obey the unwritten rules - the traditions and working practices that had "accumulated in the party's history".

Such rules had stood "the test of time and become conventions that are proven to be effective", he said.