There's something serious going on in the senior ranks of the CCP at the moment. The SCMP:

A high-profile education campaign aimed at improving the quality of incompetent Communist Party cadres will only help to reduce the increasing number of protests over rampant corruption rather than fix the problem entirely, a senior official said yesterday.

In a rare press conference by a top party official, the vice-director of the Central Organisation Department, Li Jingtian , said the "mass incidents" in China had arisen because local authorities had been incapable of dealing with widespread grievances among rural residents.

"Some of our grass-roots cadres are probably less competent and unable to resolve the conflicts that triggered the incidents."

He said he believed the three-phase "Advanced Education Campaign", launched at the start of the year by President Hu Jintao to engage the country's 69 million party members, would cut down on the number of protests....the campaign, which focuses on party members' self-education rather than meting out tough punishment for corrupt and incompetent cadres, should not be viewed as a political movement involving purges or rectification.