The exact number of "tigers" toppled by Xi's anti-corruption campaign -- in other words, officials who were once part of the designated elite whose jobs had to be cleared through the Party's central personnel system -- is not easy to calculate. The best estimates put it around 300 to 400, including scores of generals. The officials who have been prosecuted and jailed include members of the Politburo, ministers, vice-ministers, the heads of state-owned enterprises, provincial party leaders and governors, and mayors.
In each of those cases, the investigations don't just hit the individual official who has been targeted and detained.
Literally, hundreds of thousands of people who are tied into and rely on that single person for their income are effectively swept up with them. Their livelihoods, and all that they have invested in clawing their way through the system, can evaporate with the stroke of a pen. Some members of the patronage networks are often arrested themselves.
Xi has made enemies of them all. "Xi has destroyed millions of people in the elite who now all hold a personal grudge against him," said a China-based businessman, who asked not to be named, earlier in 2019. "These people are not a bunch of uneducated peasants from the sticks in Henan. They had skin in the game."
