Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s purging of a third Politburo member points to the failure of his long-running anti-corruption program, as well as that of the Communist Party’s promotions system, analysts said.

Authorities said this week that Ma Xingrui was being probed for graft, confirming experts’ suspicion that he was in trouble; he had not been seen in public for months.

The ensnaring of top officials indicates that “Xi’s 13-year (!) anti-corruption campaign has not worked” and “the Party’s personnel system is not functioning properly,” analysts at the China-focused research firm Trivium said. Still, as a biographer of Xi wrote in The Wall Street Journal, the campaign may be meeting an unstated goal of “keeping officials loyal and on their toes.”