You seem to be circling the issue. Corruption can mean anything from taking bribes to exerting influence that is outside Xi’s interests.

And far too people are aware that Xi is extraordinarily corrupt..

"Similarly, Xi’s siblings, nieces, and nephews held assets worth over $1 billion in business investments and real estate"

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Un...

Or in authoritarian regimes it often means "stole from the party". As long as you only steal from the poor and give the proper bribes up the chain you are in no danger in most corrupt societies. Except possibly in the rare occasion where your corruption causes a disaster that embarrasses the people above you in the hierarchy.

Far too often when you see stories about how someone was persecuted for corruption it boils down to "he stole from rich people".

This is true in any power structure ever. Kings, mafia, pick-your-dictatorship, many democracies. Hurt or steal from the poor, not other rich or elite, and always make sure to kick some up to the big guys.

All presidents rise to power on a message of anti-corruption, they all clean house when they start in office but usually it falls off until the next president takes over. The problem Xi has is that now that he is now president for life, the house isn't getting cleaned in the usual way every 10 years; he has to do a corruption purge every so often or things will get grimey.

> All presidents rise to power on a message of anti-corruption

You mean in China specifically? Because there are some pretty significant counterexamples in other places right now.

I'm just talking about China, we were only talking about China right? We don't really have a lot of data points to go by since there have been only three presidents so far with supreme power (after it was combined with General Secretary and military chair head, before that president was more of a ceremonial role).

> Xi Jinping rose to power on a message of anti-corruption

Just like Trump and Modi