China’s Communist party has unleashed a rectification campaign of a scale and tone not seen in more than a decade as the new leadership seeks to address frustration over corrupt officials while avoiding bold political reforms.

As investors wait for party chief Xi Jinping to initiate long-delayed economic reforms and liberals in China push for political change, Mr Xi is now taking a page out of the playbook of Mao Zedong, the charismatic but dictatorial politician who led China through a sequence of mass campaigns.

In a key speech on Tuesday, Mr Xi exhorted the party that it must embrace the “mass line” to avoid its own extinction. Every cadre, demanded Mr Xi, must “look in the mirror, tidy your attire, take a bath and seek remedies” to clean the party from formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance.