China’s Communist Party chose 24 men for its Politburo in October 2022, all of them Han Chinese. It was the first Politburo without a woman in 25 years, and it included nobody from any of China’s 55 officially recognized ethnic minority groups. After four years, the group is even more exclusive.
In October 2025, the party expelled Central Military Commission Vice Chairman He Weidong. Former Xinjiang Party Secretary Ma Xingrui followed in July 2026, and top general Zhang Youxia last month. Official notices accused all three of serious violations; the notice on Zhang also alleged disloyalty, “faction-building” and a remarkably large number of bribes. Their removal leaves an active Politburo of 21—a concentration that tells us something important about power under Xi Jinping. Diversity exists farther down the political system, often through quotas and administrative rules. It disappears where the most consequential decisions are made.
A narrowing funnel
The contrast starts with the membership. At the end of 2025, women accounted for 31.5 percent of the Communist Party of China’s 101.3 million members, while ethnic minority members made up 7.8 percent. Among people admitted in 2025, women made up 46.5 percent and ethnic minorities 10.2 percent, according to the Central Organization Department.
Representation was also visible at the 20th Party Congress. Its 2,296 delegates included 619 women or 27 percent, and 264 ethnic minority members or 11.5 percent, drawn from 40 minority groups. Then the funnel thins. Only 11 of the 205 full members elected to the 20th Central Committee were women, while nine came from ethnic minority groups. At the Politburo level, both figures fell to zero.
This isn’t a simple story of too few qualified candidates. Shen Yiqin, an ethnic Bai woman, had served as Guizhou governor and provincial party secretary before the 2022 congress. She became a state councilor in 2023 and later president of the All-China Women’s Federation, yet never entered the Politburo. Her current brief covers civil affairs, human resources, social security, veterans, sports and liaison with the ethnic affairs bureaucracy. Those duties matter, but a state councilor ranks below the Politburo members.
Rules stop below the top
China has spent decades building representation requirements. A 2001 party directive called for at least one woman in provincial and prefectural party, government, legislature and political advisory leadership teams, as well as in county party and government teams. It gave early priority to women in education, culture, health, family planning, civil affairs and similar departments. The 2021-2030 national program for women calls for more women in local government leadership, more female principal officials and better access to training, rotation and key posts.
Yet many targets use the phrase “gradually increase” without a numerical floor for the Central Committee, Politburo or its Standing Committee. The result is presence without a reliable route to the top.
A peer-reviewed study of every prefectural mayor and party secretary serving between 2003 and 2020 found that women followed faster but more restricted careers. Female officials were younger and better educated, but more often came through the Women’s Federation, Communist Youth League and other less powerful portfolios. Men had greater access to finance, development and core party offices. Women held only 135 of 1,987 mayoral posts and 88 of 1,694 party secretary posts.
The study also found a revealing pattern: about 20 percent of women mayors were ethnic minority members, compared with 13 percent of male mayors. One appointment could therefore satisfy expectations for both gender and ethnic representation, while leaving more positions open for Han Chinese men. The evidence supports this “tandem quota” effect at the prefectural mayor level, but it doesn’t establish that top leaders consciously use the same calculation when selecting the Politburo.
Ethnic glass ceiling
Ethnic minority cadres face a parallel divide. China’s ethnic autonomy law reserves the head-of-government in autonomous areas for a member of the relevant minority, but the more powerful party secretary post has generally gone to a Han Chinese official. For decades, minorities held roughly 10 percent to 11 percent of full and alternate Central Committee seats, yet most sat in the alternate tier.
No ethnic minority official has ever joined the Politburo Standing Committee. A handful reached the wider Politburo: Zhuang general Wei Guoqing and Mongolian leader Ulanhu served there during the Mao and early reform years; Hui Liangyu later served in the body and became a vice premier. Those cases show the barrier isn’t formal, but they also highlight how rarely it has been crossed.
Under Xi, official ethnic policy increasingly centers on “forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation.” At the 2021 Central Ethnic Work Conference, Xi linked good cadre standards to firm support for centralized party leadership and commitment to his national community project. The policy stresses political unity, shared identity and security more than representation by distinct groups.
Perhaps this policy did not directly cause the all-Han Politburo. Public records don’t reveal the bargaining, vetting or rejected candidates behind elite appointments. Still, the roster fits a system where minority identity can warrant representation in congresses and autonomous governments but offers little access to the center.
Diversity and decision quality
An all-male, all-Han Chinese Politburo doesn’t mean every member thinks alike. Nor does adding women or minority officials guarantee different policies. Officials who rise through the same selection system may share its priorities. But there is evidence that representation can affect what institutions do. Women held about one-fifth of the seats in China’s 12th National People’s Congress but sponsored 44 percent of legislative bill proposals and more than half of proposals concerning women’s rights and interests. That finding comes from the first systematic study of female legislators’ behaviour in the national legislature.
The useful question isn’t whether one woman or minority official would transform policy but whether the leadership is drawing on the country’s full pool of political experience. The body, after all, makes decisions on birthrates, employment, Xinjiang, Tibet and social welfare.
The practical tests are clear. Party authorities could publish measurable targets for women and ethnic minority officials at each rung of the promotion ladder, report compliance and place more candidates in finance, security, organization and provincial party secretary jobs that feed Politburo selection. They could also stop treating one minority woman as sufficient evidence that two representation goals have been met.
Watch the 21st Party Congress, expected in 2027. Count who enters the full Central Committee, who receives powerful provincial and central portfolios, and who reaches the Politburo. Speeches about equality are easy to issue. Twenty-one occupied seats provide the harder evidence.
Chandu Doddi is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Chinese Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.