Allegiance, the Privilege of the Party BEIJING - In late 2011, with China's leadership transition a year away, a power struggle at the very top of politics was entering its final, hefty phase. That November, a British businessman, Neil Heywood, would die in Chongqing, setting off a series of dramatic events that led to the downfall of Bo Xilai, a pretender to the Communist Party throne. Just a month before, China's then-leader, Hu Jintao, had given what state media said was a "major speech" at the sixth full meeting of the party's 17th Central Committee in Beijing. Its main topic: deepening cultural reform and supplying the Chinese people with "a healthy and rich cultural life," Xinhua, the state-run news agency, reported on Oct. 18, the last day of the four-day event. Some were left wondering: Why culture? Why now? To this day, the answer isn't apparent to outside observers. But people in the know understood immediately, says one scholar, an observer of and participant in Chinese politics who belongs to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a leading government research group. The real point of the culture speech wasn't culture, this person said. Mr. Hu - the party general secretary, state president and leader of the military - was challenging party members to agree with him and thereby to declare their loyalty in the waning months of his power. "The cultural policy decision - it may seem ridiculous on the outside, but these things serve a purpose that foreigners don't see," said the scholar, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue. "It gets transmitted down to the very bottom of the party, and then the leaders can see who is loyal and who is not," he said. "Of course, showing loyalty through enthusiastic support does not necessarily mean true loyalty, but it does mean a person stands up publicly and states his support - and that means everyone knows where he stands," he said. This is a 5,000-year-old system. That last sentence is crucial. The Communist Party, and therefore politics in China, are often viewed through the prism of, well, party politics. But what the scholar was saying was that something far older and more powerful is at play: an ancient moral code of fidelity to a lord, or fealty. Of course, Mr. Hu's culture theme was carefully chosen to resonate. And signs of increasing, if tightly managed, openness, at least in film, suggested by the intensive interaction between Chinese and non-Chinese deal makers at the recent Beijing International Film Festival, may demonstrate that Mr. Hu's policy was not without substance; it may even have helped prompt change. But as the scholar suggested, that may be beside the point. We may be seeing this again in a campaign under way today: a push for better morals among Party members and less corruption by Mr. Hu's successor, Xi Jinping, announced on April 19 after a Politburo meeting, dubbed the "check the mirror, fix your clothes, take a bath, see the doctor" campaign. It sounds like homespun advice, something a parent would give. And it fits with views that Mr. Xi has communicated before: Sort out your morals or the party is doomed. He has said it many times, in different ways, since taking power last November, having seen off the challenge posed by Mr. Bo. And everyone knows corruption is an enormous problem, so it resonates. Yet that such views are voiced so often highlights that these campaigns tend not to work. Perhaps this is because their real meaning lies elsewhere. "The results of such campaigns have been dismal judging by their required frequency," the editor of The South China Morning Post of Hong Kong, Wang Xiangwei, wrote in a recent column. "But they have usually served at least one unspoken purpose over the years: helping party leaders consolidate power by purging potential enemies and having remaining members swear loyalty," Mr. Wang wrote. Mr. Wang compared Mr. Xi to Mao Zedong, whose Cultural Revolution campaign, launched in 1966, devastated society and was seen by many as a proxy - if one that Mao himself believed in - for his final consolidation of power. Two days after the April 19 call for party cadres to clean up their act - the campaign is to start in the second half of the year and last about a year, according to media reports - Mr. Xi moved on the military, Mr. Wang wrote. Generals and other senior officers are to serve as ordinary soldiers for at least two weeks (it wasn't clear if this was meant to be a one-time requirement or a yearly one). "Officers should prepare their own daily necessities and pay board fees as others do, and they are forbidden to sightsee, receive gifts, attend banquets or meddle in sensitive army affairs," Mr. Wang wrote, citing Xinhua. He commented: "Cynics can dismiss this as a gimmick, but it is not. This kind of order may be unusual for a modern military, but it does send a strong message about who is in charge. As the scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said, such campaigns are transmitted down to the very bottom of the party, reflecting its strong, Leninist organizational capacity. That's the form. The substance, as he said, is "loyalty," or fealty, an ancient value that survives to this day.