Does Xi Jinping Have Little Time Left? Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli Expelled Before US Trip—Without the Harshest Charges! Last CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin Also Rumored to Be in Trouble; The Fifth Plenary Session Is the True Ultimate Showdown! [Jiangfeng Outlook 20260923 Episode 495]

This video explores the political background and maneuvers surrounding Xi Jinping completely expelling Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli from the Chinese Communist Party and military, and transferring them to military procuratorates on the eve of his visit to the United States. The analysis points out that this move appears superficially to be a show of muscle by someone firmly in control, but is actually a preventive measure to lock down Beijing and prevent sudden changes. Meanwhile, the program examines phenomena such as Han Zheng's visit to the United Nations, major local personnel reshuffles, rumors surrounding Zhang Shengmin, and the power vacuum within the Central Military Commission, arguing that the 5th Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee scheduled for October 26 is the ultimate decisive showdown where all factions will play their final cards.

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Hello friends, welcome to Jiang Feng Horizon. The man at the very pinnacle set off today to fly to the United States. Over in Washington, Trump has rolled out the red carpet all the way to the tarmac, with a 21-gun salute, an honor guard from all three services, and even a flypast by strategic bombers scheduled into the program. Military analysts from the UK's Daily Telegraph noted that right before boarding the plane, the big boss suddenly stripped two military giants, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, of their party membership and military positions, transferring them to military procuratorates. He did this precisely to enter the White House projecting the strongman posture of someone commanding all three services and holding absolute power. Yet at that exact same moment, completely contrasting word came out from inside the Great Firewall, with someone directly tossing out a startling deduction: this trip to Washington cannot be called a coronation tour to reassert supreme might at all. Once the man in Zhongnanhai finishes his visit and returns to Beijing, his international utility value as the nation's supreme leader will basically have been squeezed dry. What will truly determine the fate of this giant ship and the life or death of all political forces is the 5th Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee, newly set to be convened on October 26—that is the ultimate decisive showdown where all factions will finally show their hands.

This statement sounds extremely extreme, and let us not rush to conclusions just yet. But if you simply stand outside the red walls of Beijing and take a look, over the past 48 hours the entire Zhongnanhai has felt just like a shop rushing to close before lockdown, throwing out a succession of heavyweight directives that everywhere exude an abnormal anxiety. Let everyone ponder this: if a person truly possessed Mount Tai-like confidence over the situation, why couldn't the case of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli—which has dragged on for a full nine months—wait even four days for the special plane returning from a US visit, forcing it to be set in stone right before the airplane wheels left the ground? Why did the Politburo monthly meeting, usually held near the end of the month, suddenly get pulled forward to the 21st, slapping a countdown chain accurate to the exact day onto the entire Party from the very start? And why, within the exact same time window before the special plane took off, did high-level figures at the very top scatter across the country from north to south, with strategic regional commanders also being hurriedly and repeatedly rotated in a chain? If the ruler of a major nation truly had military power firmly in his grasp and commanded the realm, his departure to visit the US should have been calm and composed. But the lineup and momentum presented now look more like someone who, before having to take a long trip out of town, is extremely uneasy about the movements at home and turns around to lock every single deadbolt on the security door. Today we are going to lay several trump cards that have surfaced one after another over the past two days on the table, to dissect two completely contrasting Beijings: one is that seemingly all-powerful head of a major nation that Washington is about to see, and the other is that lame-duck gatekeeper deep inside the Beijing imperial palace who is cornered step-by-step by a countdown, anxious to lock the backyard from the inside before stepping out. Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli have both fallen; has the gun of this military truly returned to his hands? Let's start with this card suddenly placed on the table in New York.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially announced yesterday afternoon that Vice President Han Zheng will travel to New York from September 24 to 26 to attend the general debate of the 81st United Nations General Assembly. At first glance at this news, many friends might feel this is just a routine diplomatic visit, but as long as you stretch out the timeline and pull out the patterns of how Beijing has played this diplomatic card over the past few years to compare them, the oddness of this arrangement cannot be hidden. From 2023 to 2026, the selection of figures representing China on the podium of the United Nations General Assembly followed a very dramatic trajectory: in 2023 it was Han Zheng, in 2024 it changed to Politburo Member and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and by 2025 the protocol rank was elevated further, personally spearheaded by Premier of the State Council and second-ranked Politburo Standing Committee member Li Qiang. According to common sense in the diplomatic protocol ranking of the CCP, since a Politburo Standing Committee member has already taken over a top multilateral stage like the UN General Assembly, the political protocol generally only moves forward and does not easily shrink backward. Yet today, in 2026, the roulette wheel has spun a full circle and is unexpectedly handed back to Han Zheng, who has completely retired from the Politburo and wears only the nominal title of Vice President. Some might say that having a non-Politburo member represent China at the UN General Assembly is not without precedent—in earlier years Wang Yi went when he wasn't yet a Politburo member, so what is there to make a fuss about? The problem precisely lies in the fact that this year, the person at the very peak is himself in the United States, yet Beijing still handed the UN, that grand stage gathering global leaders, over to Han Zheng, who has already exited the Politburo. Taken alone, it could completely be normal diplomatic work division, but when put together with the series of moves recently pushing Han Zheng to the forefront, it deserves a closer look. This connects right back to that scene at the Xiangshan Forum a few days ago. On September 15, at the welcome dinner of the Xiangshan Forum, CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin was right there in Beijing, and internal military generals gathered in force, yet the person who stepped onto the stage to set the tone and deliver remarks for the entire forum was neither a general in military uniform nor a Standing Committee member in the Politburo, but precisely Han Zheng. At the time, Jiang Feng had already analyzed that this card of Han Zheng is now being used increasingly smoothly, which happens to collide with yesterday's even more sensitive rumor.

Yesterday we talked about how there is a so-called compromise plan among the elders coordinated by Zeng Qinghong circulating within Beijing's top circles. No one can vouch for how much truth there is to this narrative today, but the position arranged for Han Zheng in the rumors is quite interesting. The old-guard political factions do not intend to resort to mutual destruction; instead, they are seeking a transitional solution that can both keep this big red ship from capsizing and allow the system to land smoothly. This arrangement is by no means about making Han Zheng the long-term leader of the future; what he undertakes is more like a transitional interface that ensures the state apparatus does not suffer a power outage. Rumors have it that the arrangement for the truly longer-term next generation involves a cohort of officials born in the 1960s, such as Ding Xuexiang. As it turns out, just as this rumor was finished yesterday, Han Zheng was once again the one playing the leading role in the official foreign affairs arrangements announced by Beijing. Of course, we cannot conclude that the leak has been 100% verified just because two events happened to coincide in time, but what is most worth watching in political operations is what this person begins to be used for. Han Zheng's most special political attribute right now is that his two identities happen to be staggered: in terms of state title, he is the vice president, which is the statutory standby head of state under the constitutional framework. His rank is high enough that standing on the UN podium, receiving foreign heads of state, and representing China on major international occasions pose no protocol obstacles. Yet in terms of actual intra-party power, he has already withdrawn from the Political Bureau, holds no control over organization or discipline inspection, and has no military foundation of soldiers or generals in his hands. To put it bluntly, Han Zheng's greatest political value lies in the fact that his position is high enough to steadily prop up the state's facade, but his political danger coefficient is extremely low, making it utterly impossible for him to build a new faction within the party that could challenge all sides. Such a figure is very useful when power is stable, acting as a senior protocol tool, but when power might be reshuffled and all sides are at daggers drawn, he unexpectedly becomes a rare buffer valve. If supreme power really faces a gear-shifting crisis, what the system needs is often not another strongman who immediately jumps out to grab the steering wheel, but a political interface that allows the state apparatus to continue to function normally on the surface and lets foreign governments know that there is still someone in Beijing who can shake hands and sign documents. This is also why we don't need to rush to conclusions right now that Han Zheng is going to be the successor. What is truly worth pondering is why, whenever Beijing recently needs someone who can represent the state without necessarily representing the true power center within the party, Han Zheng is pushed to the spotlight more and more frequently. A person who has already withdrawn from the Political Bureau suddenly becoming so indispensable does not necessarily mean his personal power has expanded; sometimes it precisely indicates that the core position where true power is held is experiencing some kind of extremely sensitive turbulence.

And just at the same time window when Han Zheng was heading to New York and his special plane was flying to Washington, several other heavier cards from Beijing also began to move in different directions with an abnormal rhythm. When the big boss's special plane leaves, who on earth is guarding the gate at home for this game of chess? Around the time the big boss's special plane took off, several of Zhongnanhai's weightiest trump cards suddenly stretched out an abnormal distance on the geographical map. Let's look at the whereabouts of several political giants in the past couple of days: the top leader took chief of staff Cai Qi to cross the ocean and fly to Washington, Han Zheng packed his bags and prepared to head to New York, while Premier Li Qiang quietly went south to Hangzhou on the 23rd to attend the Digital Trade Expo. These figures, who usually stay within the core circle of power and never leave an inch, chose this ultra-sensitive window when the Fifth Plenary Session was scheduled and the Zhang-Liu major case was finalized to go one east and one south, with two flying across the ocean. But compared to who leaves and who stays, the deeper mystery lies in which personnel appointments Beijing hurriedly locked down before the special plane took off.

The meeting of the CCP Central Committee Political Bureau held ahead of schedule on September 21 left a classic code at the end of the bulletin as usual: "The meeting also studied other matters." In the discourse system of the Chinese Communist Party, major personnel arrangements are sometimes not elaborated item by item in the public Political Bureau press release. Of course, we cannot directly equate the subsequent personnel reshuffles with "other matters," but just one day after the meeting, the personnel board indeed moved. On September 22, the authorities intensively announced major reshuffles of top officials in three provinces with significant strategic weight: Hu Changsheng entered Tibet to take the helm, Wu Xiaojun transferred to serve in Gansu, and Luo Dongchuan succeeded to take charge of Qinghai, followed by the consecutive completion of the party and government teams in Fujian and Henan. A reshuffle of this scale could never have been decided overnight by drawing lots after a meeting. The adjustment of provincial party secretaries affects the whole body with one move; this clearly shows that ahead of the Fifth Plenary Session, various factions are stepping up to reweld their local defense lines. Moreover, if one just glances at the resumes of these regional viceroys, the narrative that a certain faction achieved a unilateral sweeping victory simply does not hold up. Both Hu Changsheng and Luo Dongchuan have indeed worked in organization or politics and law in Fujian, and the outside world is used to stuffing them into the broad Minjiang old guard; however, Wu Xiaojun, who took over as the party secretary of Gansu, spent a long time deeply rooted in the Jiangxi development and reform system before transferring to Qinghai, with a resume so clean that not a single trace of the southeast coast can be found. Right after the 20th National Congress concluded, the room was full of old subordinates and veterans—that was a distribution of rewards after the victory was decided. But look at these chairs in Tibet, Qinghai, and Gansu today; with diverse backgrounds, this is clearly a comprehensive balance that all forces had to reach in order to maintain the stability of their local base. Local top leaders may seem far away from Zhongnanhai, but by the Fifth Plenary Session on October 26, among the more than 200 members of the Central Committee sitting in the Jingxi Hotel conference hall to raise their hands and vote, the local regional lords hold real, solid political ballots. Before the battle begins, everyone must rush to dig the air-raid shelters for their respective camps. Connecting this series of actions over the past few days, the rhythm is extremely tight: before the Big Boss's special plane even took off, the date of the Fifth Plenary Session was nailed down first, the key local ballot positions were lined up first, and then the various giants set off separately.

On the evening of September 21, the Xinhua News Agency issued a bulletin announcing that Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were expelled from the party and the military, and their suspected criminal cases were transferred to military procuratorates for legal review and prosecution. The immediate reaction of the mainstream Western media was almost entirely shocked by this heavy blow. The military analysis of The Daily Telegraph was very straightforward: this was a muscle show deliberately put on by the Big Boss for Trump and the whole world before flying to Washington. He wanted to tell the White House that there are no unsettled cases within the military and that the supreme commander still holds absolute authority. Looking solely at the surface-level organizational procedures, the Western theory of absolute power does make sense. At the closing of the 20th National Congress, the leadership team of the Central Military Commission had a total of seven members. Over the past few years, Li Shangfu, He Weidong, and Miao Hua have fallen one after another. Now, even Zhang Youxia, who had the oldest qualifications and dual identities as a red second-generation and a combat general, along with Chief of the Joint Staff Department Liu Zhenli, has been completely swept out the door, leaving only the Chairman himself and Zhang Shengmin, who specializes in discipline inspection and anti-corruption. In the eyes of outsiders, a ruler who can send colleagues wielding heavy military power around him into Qincheng Prison one after another naturally looks like he has achieved an overwhelming, sweeping victory.

Yet if we understand just a little bit about how the operational rules of the system work, a massive temporal flaw becomes immediately apparent. Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were placed under formal investigation on January 24 of this year, and on August 28 the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress completed the legal procedures, removing both men from their positions on the State Central Military Commission and stripping them of their status as NPC deputies. In other words, these two individuals had been held in isolation and under review for a full nine months; their military power had long been frozen, their former subordinates had been purged round after round, and politically they had long been reduced to helpless scapegoats awaiting sentencing. Since the men had already been locked in the cage for nine months, why could the Big Boss not wait even a mere four days? According to the itineraries announced by both China and the US, the special plane flew to the US on the 23rd, concluded all activities and boarded the return flight on the evening of the 25th, and by September 26 the Big Boss had already returned to Beijing. The monthly meetings of the Political Bureau are frequently scheduled near the end of the month, but this time the meeting was held as early as September 21, a timing noticeably earlier than the usual rhythm. If the Big Boss truly possessed the unshakable confidence described by Western media, he could have steadily walked the red carpet at the White House, returned to Beijing on the 26th to rest for two days, and calmly signed this disciplinary circular at the routine end-of-month Politburo meeting. Why did he have to break precedent and deliberately push the Politburo meeting forward to the awkward timing of September 21? Let us tentatively call this action locking down the case. Within the procedures of organizational investigation, as long as the Politburo has not issued a final resolution, the case theoretically remains within an elastic space of investigation and multilateral maneuvering. Once the Politburo officially stamps the document, notifying the nation and transferring the case to military procuratorial organs, the procedure is termed a complete finalization of the case. By the time of the Fifth Plenary Session on October 26, all the Central Committee members could do was raise their hands to retroactively endorse a fait accompli. This fits precisely with the extreme analysis circulating within the wall, which holds that internal undercurrents regarding the handling of Zhang Youxia had been turbulent, and all parties originally intended to leave the ultimate showdown for the venue of the Fifth Plenary Session. However, for the Big Boss who was about to travel far across the ocean, leaving behind an unresolved mega military case posed far too great a risk to the capital he was leaving behind. Forcibly pushing the Politburo to stamp its seal before boarding was precisely an attempt to use supreme power to raise the legal threshold for reversing the verdict to the absolute maximum, completely sealing off his opponents' exit routes. On the surface, this looked like an imposing display of the sword; at its core, it was actually the extreme lack of peace of mind regarding his home before taking a long journey, turning around and throwing all three deadbolts on the security door.

Yet the most thought-provoking aspect of this grand drama is not merely when this lock was fastened; what truly deserves examination is that at the moment of case finalization, the most ruthless sentence from January instead vanished. This is the textual detail most worthy of being scrutinized with a magnifying glass within this seemingly murderous disciplinary circular. Let us dial the time back to January 24 of this year. On that very day, the Ministry of Defense just announced the launch of the investigation, and the PLA Daily immediately distributed a heavy-hitting, gunpowder-laden editorial, slapping Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli with an extremely rare iron hat: severely trampling upon and undermining the system of ultimate responsibility resting with the chairman of the Central Military Commission. In today's system, these words represent the highest totem of supreme command; having them slapped on directly pushed the political nature of this case to the height of challenging supreme military command authority. According to that thunderous tone back in January, the outside world generally anticipated that in the finalization circular, this charge would inevitably be proclaimed to the world as the number one crime. Yet when one opens the official circular released by Xinhua News Agency on September 21, spanning a flowing six hundred characters, it lists a long string of grave crimes: betraying original aspirations and engaging in cliques, being disloyal and dishonest to the Party, selling official posts and conferring titles, failing to discipline and manage those around oneself, and the interweaving of political and economic issues. The charges could hardly be called anything less than dense, and the characterization could hardly be called anything less than stern. Yet after reading it repeatedly for a few sessions, that severe trampling upon and undermining the system of ultimate responsibility resting with the chairman of the Central Military Commission—which pointed directly to the core of military power and possessed the greatest political explosive force back in January—had actually completely evaporated.

To be objective, the editorials of the military newspaper and the disciplinary sanction notices of the Political Bureau do have a division of labor in the nature of intra-party documents. In last year's case of He Weidong and Miao Hua, the official notice also prioritized standard disciplinary phrasing, and then the military newspaper filled in the banner of the Chairman Responsibility System. Therefore, we cannot hastily conclude from this single document that the charges have been comprehensively downgraded. The subsequent ratification resolution at the Fifth Plenary Session and the follow-up by military media remain indicators that must be closely watched. However, in the final adjudication conclusions of a case at the magnitude of Zhang Youxia, the deliberate omission of charges directly challenging the supreme commandership itself reflects the difficult inner-party maneuvering at the top. From the initiation of the case in January over a period of nine months, the major theater commands across the army did not launch a sweeping wave of loyalty pledges like they did during the investigation of Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou; the commanders and political commissars of the major theater commands maintained an unusual collective silence. Recently, overseas rumors spread that some military units showed considerable passivity toward making public pledges of allegiance. While this news cannot be independently verified at present, it at least partially aligns with the public silence we have witnessed over the past nine months. This bitter struggle was not the natural hostility rumored by the outside world; the two men were once close and ironclad allies. The real rift began with the retroactive investigation into procurement corruption by the Equipment Development Department, with the precise timing cutting off at October 2017 when Zhang Youxia stepped down as minister. Subsequently, newly promoted military brass such as He Weidong and Miao Hua were successively hit, prompting the Big Boss to launch a counterattack in January this year to take down Zhang and Liu. This was purely mutual biting after former allies turned on each other. Because of this, for various factions within the system, Zhang and Liu had already become dead pieces of no political value by September. No one would object to handing over these two heads to appease the anti-corruption banner. However, if the charges were written as trampling on and destroying the CMC Chairman Responsibility System, it would be equivalent to forcing everyone to endorse an absolute autocracy that places an individual above party discipline, dragging the esteemed First Vice Chairman of the CMC back down to share the same disciplinary vocabulary of factionalism used by ordinary political-legal bureaucrats. Objectively speaking, this technically cools down a military power crisis that shook the supreme command into a serious case of non-organizational activities and economic corruption within the party's statutory formal documents. In the ruthless power calculations of the CCP, arresting people is one thing, but whether one can arbitrarily define the character of a case is quite another. People can be handed over to you to deal with, but the pen for political characterization must never be entirely dictated by you alone. The Big Boss took down Zhang Youxia, but did not necessarily obtain the unquestionable political mandate he most wanted at the time.

What made the outside world even more nerve-wracked was that just as Zhang and Liu were being pushed into the judicial process, the last remaining chair at the CMC table also sent out extremely dangerous tremors. Yesterday morning, overseas social media suddenly leaked that Zhang Simin, currently the sole vice chairman of the CMC, was jointly taken away from his home by the Central Guard Bureau and the National Supervisory Commission amid the chaos on the eve of the Big Boss's departure from Beijing to visit the US, and his family members were also placed under restrictive control in place. However, as of now, Beijing officialdom has not released a single word, nor has any authoritative, independent source been able to cross-verify it. In rigorous political analysis, such news must never be taken as a fait accompli. Yet the reason this rumor exploded public opinion in just a few hours is because it directly struck the most fatal vulnerability in the current supreme command hub of the CCP's military: a power vacuum. Recall that back on September 17, Jiang Feng put all sorts of anomalies surrounding Zhang Simin on the table in his program. At the time, Zhang Simin was the only publicly active CMC Vice Chairman in the entire military system. At a top-tier defense forum hosted by the Chinese military like the Xiangshan Forum, logically he should have been the core protagonist sitting at the main table. Yet precisely at the most important welcome banquet, it was Han Zheng who stepped up to set the official tone. Although the next day Zhang Simin stepped forward to hold high-level meetings with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Phan Văn Giang, discussing heavily weighted strategic security topics such as the party, military, politics, and law, his marginalized tendency on the military's highest foreign affairs stage had already aroused high vigilance from the outside world. A few days ago, someone overseas threw out an even bolder claim, alleging that because the Big Boss had fallen into an isolated predicament where no one in the military could be trusted, he was even considering revising the party constitution at the upcoming Fifth Plenary Session to directly abolish the CMC institution, with the General Secretary of the Party directly assuming the role of Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, completely incorporating the military into a one-man supremacy system. This claim has major loopholes in institutional common sense; a plenary session of the Central Committee does not have the statutory power to amend the party constitution, which must pass through a National Congress of the Party. But the reason this rumor spread far and wide precisely illustrates an undeniable objective fact: the current CMC has been hollowed out beyond recognition.

Let's put aside all unverified rumors and look only at the official, public list: the seven-member Central Military Commission produced by the 20th National Congress. Following the successive downfalls of Li Shangfu, He Weidong, Miao Hua, Zhang Youxia, and Liu Zhenli, the only two individuals left on that list in black and white who are able to perform their duties normally are the Chairman of the Military Commission and Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin. This is an extremely rare sight in the history of the top leadership of the Chinese military. A modern military boasting two million active-duty troops, a massive nuclear arsenal, and five theater commands finds its highest command center formally reduced to a single table and two chairs—a situation that far exceeds the scope of normal anti-corruption. Within the military command chain, this is no longer a matter of ordinary personnel vacancies, but a top command layer that has remained severely understaffed for a long time, forcing a core question that defies common sense. If, according to the intuitive logic of many, every military leader the supreme ruler removes makes his grip on military power firmer, then with the Military Commission whittled down from seven people to just two, theoretically the military power in his hands should have reached a historical peak. Yet why does reality present the exact opposite stagnation and stalemate? If his word were truly law, why has the Chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Military Commission, vacant for over half a year, failed to be filled? Why are there no batch promotion ceremonies for full generals to fill the numerous vacant theater command and service branch chief positions across the military? Why was the posture displayed outwardly at the Xiangshan Forum unusually restrained in its sharpness, hastily retreating toward multilateralism and dialogue and consultation? True power is never proven by how many arrest warrants are issued. Sending everyone around you who holds a gun to prison may indeed ensure that no one dares to speak out in opposition for the moment, but the cost of this approach is the complete collapse of political trust in the supreme commander among the entire class of professional military officers. When the people sitting in the seats of the Vice Chairmen of the Military Commission are ruined one after another, what arises in the hearts of the generals commanding troops below is by no means heartfelt loyalty, but a self-protective instinct of everyone guarding against danger. This is why rumors surrounding Zhang Shengmin have caused such great panic. Zhang Shengmin has long controlled the military's discipline inspection authority and was the primary hatchet man for clearing out dissidents for the top leadership over the past few years. If even this final steel blade used to purge the military begins to show signs of instability, it indicates that the entire top echelon of the military has fallen into an extremely fragile crisis of trust. When a Military Commission of seven is purged all the way down to two, and now even the last Vice Chairman is rumored to be facing unusual movements, is this called a high concentration of military power, or is it that even the highest leadership cannot find a single person to whom they can safely hand over the gun? If other political forces within the party ultimately acquiesced to the handling of Zhang and Liu, this by no means equates to a full concession on the issue of military power. For a seasoned bureaucratic system, the two cards of Zhang and Liu had already lost their practical value by September. Trading two fallen generals who had already lost their freedom in exchange for welding procedural rules shut at the Fifth Plenary Session was a cost-effective political deal: people could be handed over to you to be charged with crimes, but who will ultimately control the guns in the future—that bottom card can no longer be decided by a single person. I really like friends of Jiangfeng Insight.

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