For one whole week, thousands of delegates filed into the cavernous Great Hall of the People in Beijing to attend one of the most important events on the Chinese political calendar. With Xi Jinping firmly at the helm, the National People's Congress, which concluded on Thursday, is an annual statement on where China is headed - and how it plans to get there. But absent from the meticulously choreographed proceedings were some of Xi's formerly trusted confidants, and other high-ranking officials - about 100 delegates were not present for the opening session, all swept up in a relentless wave of recent dismissals. The empty seats tell a different story to the steady, unified governance that Xi and the Chinese Communist Party seek to project. They are the starkest evidence of Xi's sweeping anti-corruption campaign which began when he was appointed general secretary of the party in 2012. More than a decade on, it shows no signs of slowing down. Why? Back in 2012, corruption really was a problem in China.…