Finally, the "political ecology" is in the spotlight. And it is President Xi Jinping who has put it there.

For too long, the discourse about corruption in this country has tiptoed cautiously around the big picture. Every time a corruption scandal has erupted, it has been presented as yet another isolated case. The overall picture is great. What went wrong was just the fall of a flawed individual, which is then quickly placed in the category of "extreme minority".

But as the number of corruption scandals has snowballed, especially with the unveiling of more and more cases of massive corruption in different regions and sectors, the "isolated case" rhetoric has grown increasingly hollow.