Why Did 20 Missile Battalions Fall Silent? Why Did No One Dare Issue an Order for 20 Minutes? | China Zun | Yaoyaojiang

On June 26, 2026, a small aircraft crashed into the CITIC Tower (China Zun) in Beijing. Following the incident, official reports were delayed and vague, media coverage was restricted, and information online was rapidly deleted. The video reconstructs the aircraft's takeoff, signal loss, and the impact process. It provides an in-depth analysis of the technical challenges faced by China's air defense system in dealing with small, low-speed targets, compares this with security reforms at the U.S. White House, and points out that the excessive concentration of power under the Chairman of the Central Military Commission may lead to sluggish decision-making. The article explores the political symbolism of "China Zun," the official cover-up of the incident, and three different versions of the story surrounding the pilot's identity (Liu Junhua). It also draws on the Soviet "Red Square incident" to deduce the potential purges and control-strengthening measures Xi Jinping might adopt.

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Hello everyone, I am Yao Yao Jiang.

On the evening of June 26, 2026, at 17:55, a small aircraft crashed into Beijing's tallest building. There was a twenty-two-hour gap between the crash and the official report. During those twenty-two hours, CCTV was located right across from the building, yet they said nothing about it, and related videos on Weibo were wiped clean within hours. When a Reuters reporter asked a police officer why the street was cordoned off, the officer replied, "You know exactly why you're asking." The whole incident can be summarized in one sentence: Beijing's most rigorous air defense, which could be described as an impenetrable "golden bell shield," was breached by a small aircraft. Why this building? Why did no one intercept it for twenty-five minutes? Who exactly was the pilot? What is Xi Jinping thinking? And what is he preparing to do? In today's episode, we will compare the U.S. and the Soviet Union to try and answer these four questions.

Let's first reconstruct the twenty-minute flight path. At 17:30, at the Shifosi General Aviation Airport in Pinggu District, Beijing, a domestically produced light sport aircraft with the registration number b12pp took off. The company that owns the aircraft is called Dongyue, and its parent company is Beijing Orient Driving School, which was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2016. According to the company's internal records, the aircraft's mission that day was a solo flight training within the airport's airspace, meaning the pilot was supposed to take off alone, circle the airport, and land, which should have taken ten minutes. At 17:40, the aircraft should have returned to Runway 48 at Shifosi, but when joining the landing pattern, it did not turn back; instead, it maintained a 270-degree heading westward, flying toward downtown Beijing. Around 17:50, the aircraft passed the East Fifth Ring Road in Beijing, where the ADSB transponder signal was lost. The Beijing Tower departure control and the quiet control zone called the aircraft through four different systems, but no one responded. The tower called the military, and the military dispatched a helicopter. At 17:55, the aircraft crashed into the CITIC Tower, also known as China Zun. The impact point was on the high-level exterior wall on the east side of the building. A delivery driver described the sound as louder than fireworks. The fuselage disintegrated in mid-air, and the debris shattered the window of a taxi on the road.

The light aircraft was 16.9 meters long with a wingspan of 18.6 meters, roughly the size between a sedan and a small van. It crashed head-on into the high-level exterior wall of Beijing's tallest building. By the time the military helicopter arrived at the scene, the crash had already occurred. It was twenty-five minutes from takeoff to the building, and about twenty minutes from signal loss to the crash.

Reuters reporters arrived at the scene and saw a large number of police officers had blocked all streets leading to CITIC Tower, and passing citizens were prevented from taking photos by police officers. Some people had already taken photos and were asked to delete them on the spot. A Reuters reporter asked a police officer why people were not allowed to pass, and the officer's four-word reply was asking the obvious. This sentence was directly published by Reuters in its English wire service. CNN also sent reporter Mike to the scene. In his report, he pointed out one thing: the headquarters building of the state broadcaster CCTV was right across the street from the impact site, facing each other across the street. However, CCTV's news that night said nothing about it. The Financial Times Beijing correspondent also rushed to Shifo Airport, where the plane took off. He photographed a group of men in black being supervised by uniformed police officers searching a black Buick in the airport parking lot. He saw at least five police cars on the spot. The police were also searching the office of the flight school. This is a commercial airport, which usually does not even have a few guards.

Soon, typing Beijing plane crash return on Weibo, and searching China Zun on Xiaohongshu only yielded content before June 25. Posts on the day of the building collision and thereafter were all deleted. A person who filmed a video and posted it received a warning phone call from the police. Not a single domestic media outlet reported the matter that night. By 4:08 PM on June 27, the WeChat official account of the Chaoyang District government finally released a brief announcement. The full text of the announcement reads as follows: At 17:55 on June 26, near the East Third Ring Road in Chaoyang District, a single-engine two-seat light sport aircraft collided with a high-rise building during flight. Only the pilot on board died, and thirteen people at the scene were injured. Pay attention to a few details: first, the channel did not appear the three words China Zun; second, the announcement did not appear the four words CITIC Tower; third, the announcement had no information about the pilot, no name, no gender, no age, no motive. In this announcement delayed by twenty-two hours, there is only abstract information of one aircraft, one building, and one person. This is a report with strong Chinese characteristics!

So let's start by dissecting the name of the collided building that was intentionally covered up in the announcement. If you simply treat China Zun as a 528-meter-tall office building, what you see is the kind of narrative from the BBC, CNN, and the FT, saying that Beijing's tallest building, the eleventh tallest building in the world, an office space that can accommodate 12,000 people, the headquarters of CITIC Group, a building 6.5 kilometers away from Zhongnanhai, was hit by a plane. Of course, these are all correct. But China Zun is not just such physical existences. China Zun is a building whose name and shape are filled with political symbols.

Let's talk about the name first. The registered name of the developer of this building, CITIC Group, applied to the government is CITIC Tower. Wang Gengwu, the vice chairman of the developer, once explained in an interview that the design of China Zun was led overall by the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design, with Britain's TFP taking charge of the conceptual design of the appearance. The shape of the entire tower was clear to the designers from the very beginning, taking inspiration from the ancient Chinese ritual vessel Zun. The ancient Chinese description of state governance is that the major events of the country lie in four feathers—actually, the top two major events of a country are only two: sacrifices and wars. And the Zun is the sacrificial wine vessel used for rituals. And the two words China actually appeared in the earliest physical literature engraved on the inner inscription of a Western Zhou bronze Zun called He. And this building in the current Chinese context also has an extra layer of semantics. On July 5, 2018, Xinhua News Agency quoted Xi Jinping in a report, saying that the Party Central Committee is the brain and hub, and the Party Central Committee must have the authority of one-man supremacy and having the final say. Therefore, the folk also have such nicknames as shape-meaning Zun. Then as the news spread, statements immediately appeared on X and Weibo that China Zun has been hit, and Xi the Zun cannot last long. A building called Zun being hit in China in 2026 was naturally endowed with political meaning.

Let us talk about its location again. China Zun is located about six kilometers east of the central axis of the CBD in Chaoyang District. In April 2018, Hong Kong's Ming Pao cited reports from multiple sources in Beijing stating that after China Zun topped out in August 2017, official inspectors went to the top floor and discovered a fatal flaw: from the top three floors of the building, namely floors 106, 107, and 108, Zhongnanhai to the west could be seen with the naked eye under good visibility conditions. If military-grade high-magnification binoculars were used, the daily activities inside Zhongnanhai could be said to be completely unobstructed. According to Ming Pao's report, this discovery triggered a series of chain reactions. Government officials who approved the initial planning scheme were severely criticized by their superiors, and the building was ordered to be rectified. According to sources, the rectification plan involved handing over the top three floors to state security (MSS) management, requiring tourists entering the observation deck to undergo security checks, and prohibiting the carriage of professional-grade high-magnification binoculars and other equipment. In the external rectification announcement, all of this was packaged as a high-rise building fire safety issue. Former Caixin editor-in-chief and well-known journalist Michael Anti posted a tweet on the day of the crash on June 26, 2026, saying: China Zun, I went inside to attend a meeting, which was quite troublesome, requiring ID registration and prior political vetting. And even so, the windows on the upper floors were all made of frosted glass, which was his personal experience. He had entered this building to attend a meeting, and upon entry, he had to register his ID and undergo prior political vetting. What he saw with his own eyes was that the glass curtain walls facing west on the upper floors were all frosted glass, also known as ground glass. This answers the suspense left by Ming Pao's 2018 report: the real way of rectification was not just state security (MSS) taking over management rights, but completely sealing off the line of sight facing Zhongnanhai. Judging from the name and location, you will understand why the official announcement by the Chaoyang District government deliberately omitted both names, China Zun and CITIC Tower, and only referred to them as high-rise buildings.

Next, let us see how this aircraft passed through Beijing's air defense, and why no one intercepted it for a full twenty-five minutes? This aircraft is 6.9 meters long, weighs 340 kilograms, has a carbon fiber composite fuselage, a cruising speed of 170 kilometers per hour, and can suppress its flight altitude below one thousand meters. Being too slow, too small as a target, and having too weak a reflection surface, these three figures overlapped, landing right in the blind spot of traditional radar detection. This problem is not unique to China; the detection of small targets on the coast is an engineering problem that air defense systems around the world have not yet completely solved. When a Chinese reconnaissance balloon flew over Alaska and Canada in 2023, the US North American Aerospace Defense Command radar also took a full four days to complete identification and decision-making. The balloon flew slowly, flew high, and had a small reflection surface. The same problem exists: Beijing's air defense system is actually very dense at the equipment level. According to public estimates cited by Taiwan's Liberty Times, there are more than twenty missile battalions around Beijing forming the capital's air defense circle. In May 2026, Beijing issued the Beijing Municipal Unmanned Aircraft Management Regulations, touted as the strictest low-altitude control regulations in the world. In these regulations, even kites and Kongming lanterns are banned in some areas. Beijing's skies can be said to be completely closed to all flying objects. But all this still cannot solve that small 340-kilogram aircraft that the radar simply could not see clearly. By the time the radar saw it clearly, it was already within the Fifth Ring Road. This is an engineering problem that the air defense of any country must face.

The US White House has once been hit by such a small aircraft. In the late night of September 11, 1994, a Cessna 150L was stolen at a small airport called Teterboro in Maryland. The person who flew the plane was Frank Coder, thirty-eight years old, a retired US Army truck driver. His life completely collapsed in that year: alcoholism, substance addiction, broken marriage, financial bankruptcy. So he chose to fly this stolen Cessna towards Washington. At 1:49 AM on September 12, 1994, the Cessna 150L crashed into the White House lawn, grazing the magnolia tree planted by Jackson in the 19th century, and finally crashing into the southwest corner of the White House main building. Coder died on the spot, while the Clinton family was not in the White House at the time; they were staying at Blair House across the street. The White House was undergoing renovations at that time.

Throughout the entire process, the radar technicians at the Swedish airport only detected the aircraft minutes before the impact, so there was no interception. In the early hours at 1:49 AM, not a single fighter jet took off, not a single missile was launched, and no armed forces took any action against this Cessna in the core airspace of Washington. Afterward, the U.S. NTSB investigation determined that this was not a failed emergency landing, but a deliberate crash, as the speed of the impact far exceeded a safe landing speed. The incident triggered a series of reforms in the United States. In May 1995, the U.S. released a White House security review report, redesigning the entire security protocol around the White House. The reforms were then further accelerated. The P-56 flight restricted area and the Zoom Video Area were established in layers, but these restricted areas themselves were not the key; the key was the change in the authorization mechanism. In December 2001, Ralph Eberhart, then Commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and an Air Force General, publicly stated in an interview with The New York Times: If time permits, we will report level by level until we request a decision from the President. If the situation is urgent and there is no time to request instructions, we will take direct action according to the pre-delegated authorization orders.

So, who exactly was this delegated to? Eberhart named them at the time: in the 48 contiguous U.S. states, this power was given to the First Air Force Commander. In Alaska, it was given to a Lieutenant General at Elmendorf Air Force Base, and in Hawaii, it was given to a Navy Admiral. These three individuals, three generals, were in charge of the three major regions of U.S. airspace. In other words, after 2001, if a small, unauthorized aircraft entered the core airspace of Washington under the U.S. system, it could be shot down, and the President might only know about it afterward. This does not mean the President lost power, but rather that the President pre-delegated this portion of power to three generals he trusted. The essence of this matter is not a technical issue, nor an equipment issue, and certainly not a military spending issue; it is about the ruler's trust in the military, and the military's trust in their own judgment. It has been pre-fixed in the system.

The U.S. system acknowledges a fact: the President can never make every interception decision within twenty minutes. Therefore, the U.S. pre-delegated the authority to fire to the military. Applying the same standard to the fifteen minutes between 17:40 and 17:55 on the evening of June 26, 2026, the command structure after China's military reform, which was personally initiated by Xi Jinping in December 2015 and established in 2016, is as follows: according to official statements, the Central Military Commission (CMC) manages the overall situation, the theater commands focus on combat, and the services focus on development. Literally, it looks like a division of labor, but if you push it one step further, you will find that the actual meaning of the CMC managing the overall situation is that the final signature for all major military decisions is concentrated in the Central Military Commission, and the Central Military Commission implements a chairman responsibility system, meaning the Chairman of the CMC himself is the final decision-maker. Regarding interception actions in the core airspace of the capital, Beijing, the sensitivity of this matter is extremely high; the impact site was only six kilometers away from Zhongnanhai, and any interception or shooting down action must theoretically go through a decision at the CMC level. However, there are currently only two people left as Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, because among the original seven, Li Shangfu was dismissed in 2023, He Weidong and Miao Hua were investigated in the second half of 2024, and Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were both removed from office on January 24, 2026. Today, the Central Military Commission is left only with Chairman Xi Jinping and the only incumbent Vice Chairman, Zhang Shengmin.

The most critical link in this chain is the authorization at the CMC level. Yet, there is no sign of any delegated authorization in China's current public information. If Chairman Xi cannot be contacted in time, the commander of the Beijing Theater cannot decide to intercept on their own. In February 2025, the National Overall Emergency Plan for Public Emergencies issued by the CCP Central Committee and the State Council clearly stated that for the handling of particularly major emergencies, decisions and deployments are made by the Party Central Committee and the State Council, and an emergency command organization is composed of relevant departments of the Party Central Committee, the State Council, and the Central Military Commission. Interception permission for the capital's core airspace, in terms of institutional design, defaults to requiring a decision at the Central Military Commission level.

So, why can this power not be delegated? The answer does not lie in any military reform document, but in Xi Jinping's own political philosophy. From July 2023 to January 2020, he took down Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, and it took Xi Jinping three years to dismantle the entire Central Military Commission that he had personally established at the 20th National Congress, using the excuse that they had undermined the CMC Chairman Responsibility System. For a ruler who does not trust the generals he has promoted, pre-authorized delegation is unimaginable, because pre-authorization means handing the power to open fire to a general whom you cannot completely control. A system that has re-concentrated all military power into its own hands will not delegate any part of that authority back out. This is why during those fifteen minutes from 17:40 to 17:55 on the evening of June 26, 2016, the radar operator of the Central Theater Command saw that plane, the control tower heard no response, and military helicopters were scrambled, but no one had the authority to order an interception. The safest course of action was to report it up the chain. I believe we already know why Beijing's air defense did not react. However, what unsettled Xi Jinping even more than the air defense failure this time was the pilot flying the plane, because based on this aircraft's flight speed, if it had continued to fly west for six kilometers—that is, for two minutes and seven seconds—it would have arrived right in the airspace above Zhongnanhai. Who on earth was this pilot? And what was his intention?

Who was the pilot? It sounds the simplest, but in reality it is the most complex. It is simple because this was supposed to be straightforward information: a person, a name, an occupation, a brief history. For any small plane crash anywhere in the world, this information would be released on the same day, or at most within two days. The difficulty lies in the fact that, regarding this incident, the authorities have yet to release any information about the pilot: no name, no gender, no age, no motive. The notification issued by the Chaoyang District Government at 4:08 PM on June 27 only stated that there was only a single person on board who was deceased. But the authorities not releasing information does not mean the public is not digging into this matter. Within the 72 hours starting from the night of the crash, the Chinese internet organically grew a chain of information. The collision occurred at 17:55, and about an hour later, around 7:00 PM on the evening of June 26, 2016, the first screenshot of an insider leak began to circulate within aviation circles and on X. The screenshot contained a brief accident log, which read as follows: June 26, 2026 (Note: text anomaly in original date), general aviation B-12PP aircraft, Liu Junhua (bracketed as member, captain), solo flight in local airspace.

At 17:30, took off from Shifo No. 4 Airport, preparing to return and land at 17:40. Re-joining Runway 18 west approach, currently the aircraft did not join normally, deviating from the approach. Maintained a 270-degree heading throughout the local airspace. Local ADSB monitored the aircraft near the East Fifth Ring Road, subsequently losing signal. Subsequent contacts with ATC and the air force failed to reach the aircraft. This text was earliest leaked through channels such as the X account Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher. Judging by the content, this looked like a preliminary accident record internal to the East 10 Aviation Company, which was screenshotted from the company's intranet by someone with permission to view it. The only field regarding the pilot's identity in this record was two characters: "member." The identity of "member" meant that this person was a member flight student of the aviation company, a client who came to learn to fly, purchase flight hours, and train by flying planes themselves. This identity is compatible with many kinds of people; he could be a middle-aged male entrepreneur, an executive of a financial institution, a retired soldier, or anyone with money and leisure learning to fly first. This was the first time the name Liu Jun entered public awareness.

At this moment, he was merely a name in an internal aviation circle record, with no political meaning whatsoever. But what happened next pushed this name in a completely different direction. Late on the night of the crash, a Financial Times reporter in Beijing rushed to the place where the plane took off, namely Shifosi Airport in Pinggu District, eastern Beijing, which is the base of the flight school. What he witnessed on the scene was several men in black supervised by uniformed police officers searching through a black SUV and a Buick GL8 in the parking lot. There were at least five police cars at the scene. The police were simultaneously searching the flight school's offices. The reporter posted photos of the scene on X, and he and the Financial Times subsequently confirmed through a private database linked via license plates and public records that the registered owner of this Buick vehicle was indeed named Liu Jun. This was the only piece of information regarding Liu Junhua in this incident that was experienced firsthand by an international authoritative media reporter and independently verified. Yet, the FT also stated a crucial point in its own report: it was impossible to confirm whether any connection existed between the owner of this vehicle and the pilot of this aircraft. Were these two Liu Junhuas the same person?

This or these? Was Liu Junhai the pilot who carried out the crash? Neither of these questions can be confirmed. From the late night of June 26 to the morning of June 27, what happened on the Chinese internet was very simple: everyone took the name Liu Jun and searched public data. Soon, someone found that under China CITIC Group, CITIC Wealth Management Co., Ltd. had a senior executive named Liu Junhai. The key evidence for this discovery came from a public document on the official website of CITIC Wealth Management. On June 22, 2026, four days before the crash, the official website of CITIC Wealth Management published a basic information disclosure document for investment personnel. In this document, Liu Junhua was listed as one of the company's five general managers of the investment department. Immediately following this, Shen Rongjin, an associate professor at York University in Canada, posted on Facebook directly linking this name to a specific identity: Liu Junhua, general manager of the special account investment line at CITIC Wealth Management, a Master’s degree holder in Finance from Renmin University of China, with 16 years of experience in financial market trading, primarily serving ultra-high-net-worth clients and strategic clients. In the post, Shen Rongjin deduced the motive, suggesting that his actions might have been driven by venting frustration over heavy trading losses.

Following this was a so-called on-site rescue photo showing a middle-aged woman with short hair lying on a stretcher. This photo was pushed and identified as the pilot of the crash, implying that she was Liu Jun from CITIC Wealth Management. Sliding to this step, the first complete version appeared in the Chinese-language circle: the pilot of the crash was a female, Liu Junhua, a financial executive at CITIC Wealth Management under CITIC Bank, who flew a plane into her own group's headquarters building due to heavy investment losses. However, to nail down this version, one thing was missing: a single word from official sources or CITIC Group. As long as CITIC and the authorities maintained their silence, this version could only be a widely circulated net-reported narrative without any authoritative confirmation. Once confirmed, it would mean that within one of China's largest state-owned financial holding groups, an executive had gone out of control to the point of flying a plane into their own headquarters building. This matter was unbearable at the level of state credit and financial stability. CITIC could not allow this version to be substantiated, but at the same time, it could not directly issue a formal denial statement, because a formal denial would mean confirming that this matter had been discussed and handled at the company level, leaving the question of whether the pilot of the crash was their executive formally on the table.

Therefore, CITIC chose a third approach. On the afternoon of June 27, 2026, at 1:03 PM, Sina Finance and Shanghai Securities News jointly published an exclusive interview titled "Cultural Soul as the Source of Stability: Liu Jun of CITIC Wealth Management Talks on Cultural Empowerment for High-Quality Enterprise Development," with reporter Ma Min credited as the author. The article included a low-key sentence: On June 17, 2026, Liu Junhua, general manager of the special account investment line of CITIC Wealth Management, shared enterprise development ideas. The content of the entire official release consisted entirely of official jargon such as compliance culture, risk control, and leading Party building. The article specifically mentioned a very subtle sentence: Amid the tests of industry fluctuations and redemption waves in recent years, CITIC Wealth Management strictly guarded the risk baseline. The entire article did not carry a single photo. The key to understanding this article lies in the logic of its release. CITIC had to respond, but it could not directly admit whether the question of whether the crash pilot was a CITIC executive had been internally discussed. So, it had to choose a roundabout way to avoid this issue, which was to publish a timestamped exclusive interview by a credited reporter, the content of which was that Liu Junhua, general manager of the special account investment line of CITIC Wealth Management, was interviewed on June 27, 2026.

What this article aimed to do was actually very clear: to establish paper evidence that Liu Junhua was still alive and still with the company. However, it did not say so directly. The article contained several very strange details. First, CITIC Wealth Management's official WeChat account had no previous convention of publishing personal interviews with leaders named by name; such official releases were highly abnormal on that account. Second, the article lacked photos. A normal official release for a senior executive's exclusive interview almost certainly comes with photos—this is standard practice. If this article were to include photos, they would also need to be from the day of June 27, 2026, to prove that this person was safe and sound. However, CITIC Group clearly could not produce such photos. Third, the article actively mentioned that amidst the tests of industry fluctuations and redemption waves in recent years, CITIC Wealth Management strictly guarded the risk baseline. This sentence corresponded to some extent to the speculation about heavy trading losses in Shen Rongjin's version, indicating that the writer clearly knew what the public was discussing and deliberately made such a response. Fourth, the release time of this article was at 1:03 PM, more than three hours earlier than the brief official briefing from the Chaoyang District Government at 4:08 PM.

In other words, before the Beijing municipal government decided how to address this matter publicly, CITIC Group had already taken the initiative to leak that Liu Junhua was still with the company. This was not a matter of coordination; it was a public relations move by a state-owned financial giant that outpaced the official government notification of the capital. This only makes sense in one scenario: the public had already linked the name Liu Junhua with the identity of a CITIC executive. CITIC had to prove he was still there, yet they were unwilling to provide any formal confirmation or response. After the afternoon of June 27, a third version began to appear in the Chinese-speaking world. A KOL in the aviation field on Bilibili, Teacher Tutu, who has around 500,000 followers, posted a video that provided a completely different version of the story. According to what Teacher Tutu relayed in the video from industry insiders, he claimed that the pilot was not a woman, but a man in his sixties, and not a CITIC Bank executive, but the head of a technology company named Liu Minghua—a coincidence of names. He was learning to fly, and the company had assigned him a female instructor who also handled sales. He had developed some romantic feelings for this female instructor.

He embezzled a large amount of company funds for this relationship to fill a financial hole. Later, the relationship fluctuated, leading to a mental breakdown, so he wanted to do something big and flew a plane into a building. Teacher Tutu repeatedly emphasized in the video that this was not a political attack or retaliation; it was just a heartbroken old man's impulsive suicide. Once this version emerged, the Chinese-speaking world immediately split. Some felt that Teacher Tutu had insider channels and that his information was credible. However, others immediately pointed out that this version conveniently neutralized all political implications. To be clear, this Teacher Tutu has been a blogger in the domestic aviation circle for several years; he might not be fabricating it, and he might have truly heard this version from some channel. But the key to the problem is not whether Teacher Tutu himself is honest, but the source of this version. This version fits three characteristics: first, a single self-media source; second, a single anonymous industry insider source; third, the domestic brand communication orientation corresponds perfectly to the explanation the authorities most hope to circulate. Breaking this down, if the pilot really was a sixty-something tech company boss who embezzled public funds due to a romantic dispute and suffered a mental breakdown, then the political implications of this incident would be wiped out.

Because he was not targeting CITIC Group, nor Xi Jinping, nor the system, and it could be categorized as the same type of Xianzhong attack seen everywhere in China since 2024. This is the version the authorities most want the public to accept. However, Teacher Tutu's version fails to explain three things. First, the registration name of the Buick car owner that the FT reporter saw with their own eyes was also Liu Junhua. If the pilot was another male named Liu Junhua, are the car owner and the pilot the same person? Second, the police's level of lockdown around the CITIC Tower, the searching of pedestrians' bags, and the response to foreign media reporters' questions—if it were just a heartbroken old man flying a plane into a building, the police response level shouldn't be this high. Third, the high-profile official interview of the CITIC wealth management executive the next day at 13:03. If the pilot had absolutely nothing to do with CITIC, why would CITIC Group rush to publish that article three hours before the local government's notification? Teacher Tutu's version cannot explain these three things, but it does explain one thing: when a narrative direction happens to be favorable to the authorities and the source structure is singular—such as self-media and a single anonymous source—this type of narrative should be treated with the most skepticism.

By now, we have three versions of the story. But beyond these three versions, one thing stands firm: the authorities are not announcing anything. It is not that they haven't had time to announce it; it is that in the face of all inquiries from foreign media and all public questioning, they have actively chosen not to disclose. CITIC Group collectively refused to comment, and CITIC Bank refused to execute. Looking back at the entire 72 hours, all public information did not come from the authorities. Some came from insider leaks, some from the FT reporter's on-site verification, and some from netizens' digging into name-based wealth management public records and Teacher Tutu's relaying of industry gossip. All official actions were passive responses. The interview CITIC published at 13:03 was because the public had already linked Liu Junhua with CITIC. And the notification from Chaoyang District at 16:08, which did not mention China Zun, was because foreign media had already reported the incident to the world. We cannot determine which of these three versions of Liu Junhua is true and which is false. Another abnormal reaction from the authorities was the suspension of general aviation pilot training nationwide. Just on June 28, near the China Zun building, netizens filmed a SWAT vehicle equipped with drone countermeasure equipment appearing on the road near CITIC Beijing.

What is Xi Jinping thinking at this very moment? What else will he do in the future? We can make a deduction through a similar event that happened in the Soviet Union. On May 28, 1987, a 19-year-old West German teenager flew a rented light aircraft from Helsinki, crossed the entire Soviet air defense system, and finally landed on the cobblestones of Moscow's Red Square. If this incident were merely the reckless adventure of a teenager, it would not be worth discussing alone in today's program. What makes it worth discussing is what happened afterward: the Soviet defense minister was replaced, and hundreds to thousands of officers were purged. Mikhail Gorbachev used this light aircraft to accomplish something he could not have done by any other means: wiping out the conservatives in the Soviet military who opposed reforms in one fell swoop. The Soviet system survived for a full 4 years after the Red Square incident in 1987, but many Soviet history researchers later agreed on one thing: on the day of the Red Square incident, this system began to openly know what it really looked like. That teenager's name was Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old amateur pilot from Hamburg, West Germany, with only about 50 hours of flight time.

According to civil aviation standards, this amount of flight time barely qualifies someone for a solo flight, far from proficient. Rust took off from Helsinki-Vantaa Airport in Finland, piloting a rented Cessna 172P. This was a four-seat, single-engine civilian light aircraft, similar in size and performance to the one that crashed into China Zun. Following his primary small objective, he first flew east, crossed the Gulf of Finland, entered Soviet airspace, and passed along Estonia and Leningrad, which is today's St. Petersburg. Near Leningrad, he was detected by the radar of the Soviet Air Defense Forces. The duty officer reported that it was an unknown target, and the marker on the radar was temporarily changed to a domestic training aircraft, and then changed again to a flock of birds. As he flew over thousands of kilometers of Soviet territory and deep into the outskirts of Moscow, he was captured by radar multiple times, but every time—due to low altitude, a small target, and identification errors—the command hesitated and was unwilling to bear the responsibility of unauthorized shooting down of a civilian light aircraft, so he did not encounter any interception. The figures held by the Soviet military at the time were as follows: hundreds of thousands of troops in the Air Defense Forces, thousands of fighter jets, and nearly 10,000 air defense missile launchers. This was one of the largest, most densely equipped, and best-trained air defense systems in the world during the Cold War, officially proclaimed by the Soviet Union to be impregnable.

Around 6 PM on the evening of May 28, Rust flew into the skies over Moscow. His original plan was to land directly inside the Kremlin, but he feared that once he landed in the Kremlin, he would be secretly arrested and the incident would be thoroughly covered up by the KGB. So he temporarily changed his mind and chose a location he knew could not be covered up: Red Square's cobblestone plaza was crowded with tourists, and Western reporters could arrive at any time. He circled back and forth near Red Square, and someone on the ground even took photos. Finally, he landed on Vasilyevsky Spusk near Saint Basil's Cathedral, which is part of Red Square and held a symbolic political significance in Soviet semiotics similar to Tiananmen Square. He stepped out of the airplane and smiled to take photos with the surrounding Muscovites. A dozen minutes later, the KGB finally arrived at the scene. When the incident occurred, the Soviet leader was Gorbachev, who had been in office for less than 2.5 years. He was pushing for two things: economic reform and glasnost (openness). Both of these things encountered huge resistance within the party and the military. The core resistance came from a whole set of conservative military and political elites left over from the Brezhnev era. In the days following Rust landing in Red Square, Gorbachev did something to make glasnost apply to his own people first.

On May 30, the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held an emergency meeting. The theme of the meeting was not to discuss how Rust got in, but why this air defense system failed to stop him. The meeting directly named Defense Minister Marshal Sergei Sokolov and Air Defense Forces Commander-in-Chief Marshal Alexander Koldunov, both of whom were dismissed on the spot. In the following months, hundreds of officers in the Soviet military were disciplined. Some research estimates that this number eventually expanded to nearly 2,000. Among those purged, the vast majority were middle and high-ranking generals left over from the Brezhnev era who maintained conservative stances against Gorbachev's reforms. Gorbachev used a light aircraft piloted by a 19-year-old teenager, which lacked even complete flight instruments, to accomplish something that would have otherwise required countless political meetings and internal party debates to achieve: a one-time purge of the conservatives in the military who opposed reform. The true political significance of this event is that the teenager Rust placed a mirror in front of the Soviet system. What this mirror reflected was not whether weapons and equipment were advanced, but that the entire Soviet command system had lost its proper response capability.

Commanders were indecisive, responsibility was passed upward layer by layer, and no single level dared to take ultimate responsibility for the decision. Gorbachev picked up this mirror and said to the entire top leadership of the the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): This is the true face of the system you have always been so proud of. The Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, less than 4 years after the Rust Event. Looking back at this incident today, it was not the cause of the Soviet collapse; it was merely an early signal of it, and the most important score for the reformers against the conservatives. Rust itself was sentenced to 4 years by a Soviet court for malicious hooliganism and violation of international aviation law. In August 1988, he was released early and sent back to West Germany. History does not simply repeat itself, but there are certain things connecting the two light aircraft incidents of May 28, 1987, and June 26, 2026. Both involved a system of which the rulers were proud, showing its true face in front of a civilian light aircraft. The conclusion Gorbachev drew from the Rust incident was that the system needed more reform. He took up the matter to push for reforms, but then the pace of reform turned around and got out of his control. In December 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.

Xi Jinping will not reach the same conclusion. A man who spent 3 years purging all the generals he promoted will not believe that reform is the answer. What he believes in is the need for tighter control. Therefore, the only conclusion he can draw from this incident is a purge. A spokesperson for the flight data platform twenty-four told the New York Times that this aircraft is typically used for training pilots east of Beijing. That day's flight was unusual. When asked whether it was accidental or deliberate, he said: I think we cannot rule out any possibility right now. For the spokesperson of an internationally authoritative flight tracking platform to leave the possibility of a deliberate act on the table in public reports is already a weighty statement. Dennis Wilder, former CIA deputy national intelligence officer for East Asia, assessed in an interview with the Financial Times that Xi Jinping would immediately think of the worst-case scenario, and missed the mark slightly. Specifically, he anticipated that Xi Jinping would worry this was an attack operation and replace the responsible officials who allowed the aircraft to take off. For an expert who has long analyzed the psychology of the top CCP leadership to actively use the word attack in public media means he believes this explanation is at least viable on the table in professional judgment.

Citing former pilots, the Financial Times reported that any flight is strictly prohibited within Beijing's Second Ring Road. Once an aircraft enters, it immediately triggers an alarm and may prompt an air force response. CITIC Tower is located near the Third Ring Road, and although not within the Second Ring Road, it is only six kilometers away from Zhongnanhai. This distance is highly sensitive to any capital security system. Then there is the precision of the time window: July 1, 2026, is the founding anniversary of the CCP, and the Beidaihe meeting is imminent. A ruler preparing for a fourth term is hit by this incident at this exact time, right into his most sensitive political window. This is why Wilder said in his interview that Xi Jinping would immediately think of the worst-case scenario. This is not guessing Xi Jinping's mind; it is describing Xi Jinping's structural predicament. According to Wilder's prediction, the person in charge of the capital's air defense will be purged first. The air force and Beijing air defense-related generals of the Central Theater Command failed in their command. This matter has already happened at the practical level, making it the easiest layer to take action against. Next might be CITIC Group, founded in 1979 with the support of Deng Xiaoping and Rong Yiren, with Wang Jun, the second son of Wang Zhen, serving as chairman from 1995 to 2006. It has long been listed overseas as one of the core institutions of the Deng-era princeling plutocrat commercial network.

For a ruler who has long been purging those with a princeling background, the incident of CITIC headquarters being struck is enough in itself to provide a reason for rectification. Potential extended directions may also include state security; the top three floors of China Zun were taken over by state security in 2018. Furthermore, the overall security of the capital's core area, airport approvals, flight plan filings, control tower monitoring, radar identification, and military interception—the person in charge of every single link may be held accountable. But once a sense of security is shattered, it is not easily repaired. With every additional round of purges, he must prove that he is never wrong. With every additional round of tilt, those still at their posts around him become even more convinced that the next one might be themselves. This is why the moment of 17:55 on the evening of June 26, 2016, might be a moment remembered in Chinese political history. Well, that's all for today. Please open the little bell so you won't miss our show. Friends who haven't subscribed yet, please also subscribe to our channel. Friends with the means, please join as members to support our unexpected development. Lighting the lamp and burning the oil to create is not easy, please like, leave a comment, and share! I am Yao Jiang, who loves thinking and focuses on logic, and we'll see you next time!