Chen Xi Placed Under Isolated Investigation! Hu Chunhao Leads the Liquidation Group Against the Xi Jinping Faction; The Legal Regime Change in 2027 Has Begun! [Jiang Feng Outlook 20260703 Episode 426]
This episode mainly analyzes the drastic changes in the high-level power structure of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The article points out that although Xi Jinping remains the nominal supreme leader, his personnel and military powers have been hollowed out, and the elders' council and reformists are gradually taking over power. Li Hongzhong's research activities are interpreted as submitting a "letter of surrender" to the new team, marking the acceleration of the transition process and the decline of Xi Jinping's power. At the same time, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection's arrest operations show the characteristics of assembly-line work, and the heads of key departments such as trade unions and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission have been replaced, foreshadowing that the transfer of power and the liquidation of Xi Jinping's faction are underway. Foreign policy has also shifted, with signs of a warming of relations with the United States and Europe, while condolences extended to Iran show Beijing's strategic adjustment on the international stage.
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Welcome back to Jiang Feng Horizon, friends.
Now, the big boss of the CCP is still clearly sitting on the dragon throne, but the imperial guards outside the door have quietly been replaced by someone else's team. The two most critical powers—personnel management over official positions and disciplinary control over arrests—have long been taken over by the eyes and ears of the elders' council. With no retreat left, he can only grit his teeth and stare fixedly at that date which will determine his life or death.
On the morning of July 2, that date began to show. The first headline on the front page of Xinhua News Agency was "Important Speech by General Secretary Xi Jinping, Warmly Inspiring the Whole Party, the Entire Military, and the People of All Ethnic Groups Across the Country," full of festive cheer. But if you keep scrolling down to the inconspicuous twenty-fourth item, there is a small subheading: "Li Hongzhong Investigates and Researches the Work of County and Township-Level People's Congress Elections in Beijing." The top headline was still wishing him a long life, while the twenty-fourth item was already busying itself with the leadership transition. At that exact moment, the temperature inside the red walls dropped straight to freezing point. The candles of July 1st had not yet cooled, and tickets for the 21st National Congress had not even started printing, yet the gongs of the elders' council were already ringing deafeningly in the big boss's ears.
Li Hongzhong, the executor of this task, holds an extremely delicate status. In the officialdom of the CCP, being able to survive until today relies on a sense of smell that ranks among the top in the entire party. Back then, his remark that "absolute loyalty is absolute unloyalty" directly tied himself to the big boss's chariot, making him recognized across the party as the number one model of loyalty demonstration. Xi Jinping had always believed that as long as this dog was still wagging its tail at the door, he still had bargaining chips. Yet precisely on this July 2nd, this model of loyalty did not, as usual, shout slogans in the newspapers to support the core, but instead ran exceptionally diligently to do errands for the leadership transition.
Under normal circumstances, the words "leadership transition" are merely routine bureaucracy in the system, and county-level officials would even look forward to a chance to move up to a better position. But at this moment, resting on the head of Old Xi—who has lost control of both military power and personnel authority—these two words are a death warrant hurled at him by the Senate of elders. This is no exaggeration; the single venture he invested the most capital in was preventing a leadership transition from falling onto his own head. The 2018 constitutional amendment completely deleted the clause stating that "the term of office of the President and Vice-President of the State shall not exceed two consecutive terms," garnering over 2,900 votes in favor in the Great Hall of the People with only two dissenting votes. At the 20th National Congress in 2022, Hu Chunhua, the designated successor chosen across generations by Hu Jintao, was kicked out of the game entirely, unable to even enter the Politburo. During the closing ceremony of that same 20th National Congress, before the lenses of the entire world, veteran leader Hu Jintao—who had proposed stepping down—was escorted out of the venue by his arms. He had cleared the field of his successors, the ones he was supposed to hand over to, and the ones who were supposed to take over.
Why is he so terrified of handing over power? The logic is simple: the day power is handed over is the day accounts are settled. He set this precedent himself. As soon as he took office, the former security tsar Zhou Yongkang received a life sentence, CMC Vice Chairman Xu Caihou died under investigation, and another CMC Vice Chairman, Guo Boxong, also received a life sentence. Having broken the rules to such an extent, does he dare bet that his successor will treat him with courtesy? Moreover, today's ledger is much thicker than it was a decade ago. According to overseas reports, the human and physical evidence concerning the Li Keqiang case is gripped in the hands of the party elders. Last year at the negotiating table, the Americans brandished a list of overseas assets belonging to the CCP elite—USD 20 trillion—which includes the big boss's family, but neither Hu Jintao nor Wen Jiabao. Therefore, while others hear the words "leadership transition" as a procedure, he hears them as a liquidation schedule.
Frightening as it may be, through all these past years he has never panicked. Why? Because this entire procedure was tightly gripped in his own hands from start to finish. The crux of CCP elections has never been the voting itself, but rather getting onto the candidate list. To enter the list, one must first pass political vetting and organizational evaluation. This checkpoint is guarded by the organizational departments of Party committees at all levels—from county, city, and provincial party committees all the way up to the CCP Central Committee Organization Department. Thus, the national deployment meetings for the leadership transition have always been jointly held by the General Office of the NPC Standing Committee, the Organization Department, and the Publicity Department. After the Vice Chairman of the NPC finishes speaking, the next to speak is the Minister of the Organization Department. Voting is the business of the common people, but gatekeeping is the business of the Organization Department. Whoever controls the gatekeeping selects the people who become their own.
During the previous round of leadership transition in March 2021, at the same national deployment meeting, the speakers were Wang Chen and Chen Xi. Chen Xi, Old Xi's Tsinghua roommate, had guarded the personnel dossiers for him for a decade. With a sworn brother guarding the gate, he didn't panic at all during that round. The ballots traveled layer by layer upward, arriving at the Great Hall of the People in March 2023, where Old Xi was unanimously elected to consecutive terms as state president.
This year's meeting was held on April 1, with the official titles unchanged and the same two positions speaking, but the personnel completely replaced. On the NPC side, it was replaced by Li Hongzhong, one of Old Xi's men. On the Organization Department side, however, it was replaced by Shi Taifeng, the elders' man. As for the former Organization Department Minister Chen Xi himself, his title as president of the Party School was stripped in early June, and he has not appeared in public since. Overseas reports indicate he has already been placed under isolated investigation.
There was also a date that matched explosively: rumors say that on April 1, the exact same day the leadership transition deployment meeting was held, Hu Chunhua took office as the head of the team liquidating the Xi faction. The assembly line for succession opened and the liquidation team was officially registered, all wrapped up within a single day. With the gatekeepers changed, where will this machine turn? There are two lines: one leads to March 2028 to elect the next state president. The other is even closer, leading to the more than 2,000 Party delegates at next year's 21st National Congress. According to the timeline of the previous session, the election must be launched around the end of the year. The same organizational system is still doing the political gatekeeping; the delegates enter the venue to elect members of the Central Committee, and a plenary session determines the General Secretary. But when you calculate this ledger, if the gatekeepers have changed, the selected delegates change; if the delegates have changed, the Central Committee members change; and if the Central Committee members change, do you even need to calculate whose head the General Secretary's seat will fall upon next year? In 2022, he relied on this very machine to secure a unanimous re-election. But now the machine is still the same machine, only the direction it is turning has flipped 180 degrees.
Li Hongzhong choosing this exact juncture to high-profilely inspect the transition work is equivalent to publicly announcing to the entire Party that despite the struggling figure above, the succession assembly line is already in motion. People.cn published it, Xinhuanet published it, and the official website of the National People's Congress published it as well. They cleared such prominent layout space for the exact same errand-running inspection task on the very same day. Furthermore, notice that after the previous round of transition deployment meetings concluded, the various provinces handled things on their own; looking back at the reports from that year, no Vice Chairman was seen specifically going down for inspections. Three months after this meeting concluded, the top-ranking Vice Chairman took the field personally—a scale unseen five years ago. In the CCP's discourse system, which extremely emphasizes political rules, this is a silent notification proclaiming to the entire Party: the grand situation is set, the power to manage official caps is no longer in his hands, go knock on the new faction's door. The new round of official cap distribution has officially commenced under the Organization Department controlled by the Senate.
Older viewers may remember two incidents that secured Li Hongzhong a notorious place in the annals of officialdom. The first occurred in 2010 when he was still the governor of Hubei Province. Faced with a sensitive question from a reporter during the Two Sessions, his expression darkened, and he reached out in public to snatch away the recording pen of a Party newspaper reporter, causing an uproar nationwide. At that time, every inch of his face reeked of arrogance and bullying. The second incident is even more extraordinary, as it is the origin of his famous saying. In 2016, while serving as the Party secretary of Tianjin, he uttered the phrase "Absolute loyalty is absolute disloyalty" to the entire Party for the first time. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, no one else had ever expressed loyalty so nauseatingly in public. Relying entirely on this near-shameless trick of demonstrating loyalty, he enjoyed a smooth ascent into the Politburo and was ultimately planted in the National People's Congress as the top-ranked vice chairperson. At the time, political observers outside the Great Firewall tacitly understood that putting Li Hongzhong into the People's Congress carried a special mission. He was essentially a mole planted by Xi Jinping inside the People's Congress to keep a dead-eyed watch on its chief, Zhao Leji. Because the legislative portfolio is too crucial—handling legislation, appointments, dismissals, and even impeachment—within the framework of the Party Constitution and the Constitution, when the day for a showdown finally arrives, all legal procedures must go through the People's Congress. Xi Jinping did not trust them, so he had to place his most loyal hunting dog right by their side to tightly guard this final line of defense.
Yet, if you look at it now, this line of defense has completely collapsed. Just last week on June 26, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress stripped a long list of high-ranking officials of their posts in one fell swoop. Those sitting on this dismissal list were almost exclusively loyalists whom Xi Jinping had painstakingly cultivated over the past few years. What is even more fatal is the flip side: Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, the military powerhouses whom Xi Jinping has long wanted to eliminate, were officially announced for investigation back in January. Although the Standing Committee of the People's Congress has held four meetings this year and churned out dismissal lists one after another, the deputy qualifications of these two individuals remain untouched, safely listed among the military delegation to this day. Everyone dismissed was his own man, while those under investigation were left alone. This shows that the control panel keys of this legitimacy meat grinder no longer belong to Xi.
Li Hongzhong, who was supposed to act as a nail inside the People's Congress and tightly guard the final position for Xi, not only failed to argue his case on the merits, but this week scurried over to eagerly run errands and provide a stage-managed backdrop for the transition process dominated by the Council of Elders and the reformists. This is fascinating. A figure like Li Hongzhong might be thoroughly mediocre when it comes to construction and promoting development, but when it comes to sniffing out political winds and reading facial expressions within Zhongnanhai, few in the entire Party can rival him. Every single step of his meteoric rise throughout his life has landed precisely at the turning points of political shifts. For such a sophisticated opportunist who views political security as paramount, the errand he should be avoiding at all costs right now is high-profile management of the leadership transition, because the very word transition constantly reminds everyone that the term of the person at the top has reached its end.
If Li Hongzhong felt that Xi Jinping still held the gun and could wield absolute power as before, he would surely find a hundred excuses to shirk this task out of fear of offending his old master. Yet not only did he go, but fearing lest anyone miss it, he had three official websites publish it simultaneously on the same day. This is a letter of surrender openly submitted to the new team. Why was this letter of surrender delivered in such a rush? He has calculated the ledger in his mind better than anyone else. Among the assessments outside the Great Firewall, there is a list—take it as insider gossip—among the Xi faction's Politburo members He Lifeng, Li Hongzhong, Chen Min'er, and Huang Kunming, at least two are bound to go down. Furthermore, born in 1956, he will turn seventy-one next year, and under the old unspoken rule of "seven up, eight down," he is slated to step down regardless. Therefore, it is not hard to guess what is written in this letter of surrender: Respected elder leaders, my previous flattering slogans were merely play-acting for the occasion; now the political winds have changed, and I, Li Hongzhong, am the first to recognize the situation. I am no longer playing the role of a surveillance nail; I am here to run errands for you all, asking only that when the dust settles on the new team at the Twenty-First National Congress, I am allowed to land safely and am spared from being sent to Qincheng.
Look at that, even the most sycophantic zealot in the entire Party—the top devoted follower who once helped lift Xi Jinping onto a pedestal—has become too impatient to help carry the sedan chair for the transition carriage the moment he catches the scent of shifting military and personnel authority. This demonstrates that in the underlying logic of officialdom, everyone has seen through the true nature of this core as a spent force before the Twenty-First National Congress.
Around the July First founding anniversary, the corruption-hunting machinery of the CCP Central Committee was uncharacteristically quiet, without a single detention announcement. The pages were flooded with blazing red celebration wallpapers and birthday slogans. This is actually easy to understand; since it is a birthday, they have to put on a show of civility, hide the blades for a moment, and silently schedule tasks in the background. As soon as dawn broke on July 2, right after the Communist Party's birthday passed, this detention machine immediately resumed full speed. With the loudspeakers blaring, large state-owned enterprises, water conservancy construction worker organizations, government think tanks, and local people's congresses—five seemingly unrelated departments—were wiped out in a single pot on the same day. You need to understand the rhythm behind this. The massive machine of the CCP Central Committee wasn't arresting people on a whim this year, nor was it just a passing storm; rather, like a factory assembly line, it had long held a death book scheduling the production timeline, and when the time came, each was led to the guillotine.
Among these, the most ruthless and telling development was the investigation of Du Ling, former vice-chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Federation of Trade Unions. Just the day before, on July 1, the top boss of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions had just been replaced by Lu Zhiyuan, the Minister of Civil Affairs. With the top boss replaced just above, the second-in-command below was immediately detained, cleaning out the trade union sector within a week. Why were the elders and the reformist faction in such a hurry to move against the trade unions? Just think, who do the trade unions manage? They manage tens of millions of workers and laborers across China. With the economy as terrible as it is, factories closing, bosses fleeing, and unpaid wages and strikes happening every single day, this is the lowest and most explosive super bomb in society, and the trade union is the blast-proof valve for this bomb. Dismantling the old valve and stuffing in Lu Zhiyuan—someone they completely trust—is done precisely to guard against potential massive upheaval from the bottom up, replacing the watchdog with their own man in advance.
Aside from the blast-proof valve, Xi Jinping's private money bag was also snatched away. On June 30, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission welcomed a new boss named Cheng Fubo. The person who arrived to announce this appointment on behalf of the conservative faction of the CCP was the Organization Department of the CCP Central Committee. And who was the replaced former boss, Zhang Yuzhuo? Whose man was he? He was Chen Xi's man—the aforementioned Tsinghua roommate of Old Xi, the chief administrator who managed his cadre files for a decade and personally installed him there. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission is the master ledger for all lucrative state-owned enterprises and central enterprises nationwide, and the chief steward handling the real gold and silver of all state-owned assets in China. Replacing Zhang Yuzhuo with Cheng Fubo is tantamount to forcibly seizing the fattest safe key out of Old Xi's hands and handing it to someone else. From now on, if Old Xi wants to spend money, if he wants to use the funds of state-owned enterprises to put on a facade for himself, I'm sorry, but the accountant no longer takes orders from you.
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But the next remedy we are going to discuss, for the figure inside the Red Wall, is a poison capable of causing instantaneous suffocation. On July 2, Xinhua Net still featured a glorious and triumphant celebratory report: "Research Report on Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building Released." Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building is a newly intensified brand splashed everywhere recently. Starting in late June, the military website, the Chang'an Net, and the discipline inspection websites rolled out a continuous series of interpretations and commentaries. But his original brand wasn't this; the original one was called "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era," which governed everything—the economy, diplomacy, military affairs, and party business—a single brand ruling over all. Now, this newly renovated brand only governs party building, which means internal party meetings, studying, writing reflections, discussing discipline, and grasping ideological education. It is neither a place that manages the money bag, nor a place that commands the gun barrels, nor a position overseeing cadre promotions. While previously the entire party and country had to listen to him, it has now been reduced to studying party building in the future, where one can specifically study a bit about him. This means that even before stepping down, his position has already retreated by half a step.
Anyone with a slight understanding of inner-party political protocol would smile knowingly upon seeing Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building, because in the political tradition of the Communist Party, only a single kind of person has their ideology summarized in such a systematic and definitive verdict: old comrades who have already moved into the Memorial Hall or retired to the second line. While a person is still sitting on the stage, the party's pen-pushers have already started eagerly taking inventory of his ideological legacy. In the imperial court, this is known as setting up the mourning hall before the person has even retired.
And the factions truly holding power outside the red walls are popping the diplomatic balloons blown by the big boss over the years one by one. Wang Yi had a phone call with US Secretary of State Rubio. On the same day, the Ministry of Commerce announced that China and the US agreed in principle to lower tariffs on some agricultural products. Also in these past two days, China and Europe finalized the second economic and trade regular meeting to be held this autumn. Wang Yi is also visiting the four Nordic countries this week. The lines between China and the US, as well as China and Europe, are genuinely warming up; instead of shouting for a fight, they are sitting down to settle accounts. Whose line is this? Think about it yourself by comparing it to his tune of the East rising and the West declining over the years.
The most glaring scene took place in the Middle East. Iran, the ironclad ally and strategic partner in the mouth of Beijing, saw its Supreme Leader Khamenei die. According to the big boss's past temper of pointing the way, a high-level mourning delegation from Beijing would have already set out for the state funeral of such an anti-US giant. Yet this time, the person Beijing sent to the funeral was He Wei, Vice Chairperson of the National People's Congress. But he is the chairman of the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party, not even a Communist Party member. The Communist Party sent a non-party figure to mourn an old friend; this move priced Iran for the entire world—the courtesy has arrived, but the person himself is unnecessary. Who set the price? Anyway, it wasn't the one who has been raising a glass to China-Iran friendship every day these years.
Have you noticed? While newspapers on stage are still screaming "enthusiastically encouraging the whole party," the mainspring for the leadership transition off stage has already been tightened, the lists of those falling from grace have been posted, the memorial tablets of ideology have entered the temple, and even the steering wheel of diplomacy has been snatched away by others and sharply turned around. The clock is ticking second by second toward that rumored Fifth Plenary Session. The wall hasn't collapsed yet, but the dog in the entire party best at reading the wind has already turned around and wagged its tail at the new master. This play is truly about to curtain.
That's all for today's episode. If you feel this game of chess has been thoroughly explained, please give a like and subscribe to the channel, and share it with a few friends who are still reading Xinhua News Agency headlines. See you in the next episode.