Xi Jinping's Vote Bank Crumbles, Desperate Release of Hu Death Rumor; Wen Jiabao Leads Elders' Counterattack: If Hu or Wen Are Moved Again, the Army Will Go to War【Jiang Feng Vision 20260803 Episode 452】
The video revolves around rumors of Hu Jintao’s family’s death, the power struggle between Xi Jinping, CCP elders, and the military, claiming Hu Jintao is still the key figure for all factions to avoid conflict. The content also touches on Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli being investigated, military movements, the calculation of Central Committee votes, and the impact of several officials and senior state‑owned enterprise leaders being investigated on the October meeting.
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Welcome back to Jiang Feng Vision, friends. Remember the rumor from a few days ago? Hu Jintao, Liu Yongqing and Hu Haifeng’s whole family suffered food poisoning and died after being taken to the hospital. The news was quickly clarified, and the poster said his account had been impersonated.
In the past, rumors about Hu Jintao’s poor health, even his death, were not new. But this time, why does it involve not only Hu Jintao but also his wife and son? Someone deliberately put the words “family annihilation” on the table, and the timing coincides exactly with the announcement of the Fifth Plenum of the Central Committee.
There is another more puzzling thing: a blatantly untenable death report—why does the most adept anti‑CCP‑infighting media outlet outside the Great Firewall spend an entire episode responding to it? The side spreading the rumor puts “family annihilation” on the table to scare Hu Jintao’s side. The side responding hits back with a completely different set of arguments.
The whole episode, from start to finish, dismantles this false news, and at the end casually mentions something never disclosed before: if Hu Jintao truly encounters trouble, whose orders will the troops follow? Should they strike back immediately? Arrangements have long been made.
It also clarifies Hu Jintao’s current position. He is no longer just the leader of the reformists; he is also the last person holding back the military, Wen Jiabao, and Hu Chunhua, preventing them from taking direct action.
Hu Jintao is alive, and internal party struggles can still be discussed. The conservative faction represented by Zeng Qinghong can still bargain in the middle, and Xi Jinping’s camp still has a retreat. But if anyone touches Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, or Hu Chunhua again, this safety fuse will burn out. At that point, it will no longer be about who gains or loses a vote at the Fifth Plenum, but who fires the first shot.
So the other side issues a threat, and this side replies with an ultimatum: I do not want war, but if anyone makes a move, I will not shy away from fighting.
Let’s go back four years. On October 22, 2022, at the Great Hall of the People, the CCP’s 20th Congress closed. The world saw this scene: Hu Jintao sitting in the center of the podium, to the left of Xi Jinping. He reached for a document on the table, Li Zhanshu stopped him, and two staff members lifted him up and carried him out. As he left, he patted Li Keqiang’s shoulder.
A person who steered the CCP for ten years and commanded the military for eight years was taken away in front of the world’s cameras at the party’s biggest meeting. Logically, Hu Jintao should eventually demand Xi Jinping settle the score, but he has not acted yet.
The following year, October 2023, Li Keqiang suddenly died in Shanghai. He was the person Hu Jintao had promoted, the one who should have succeeded him. Again, Hu did not choose immediate retaliation. Many conclude that the old man has lost his teeth.
Now let’s look at the third event. The paragraph below, together with the later mention of January this year, are leaks from outside the wall supporting the elders. Listen to them as leaks.
Last October, the CCP held the Fourth Plenum of the 20th Central Committee. Before the meeting, the first vice‑chairman of the Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, approached Hu Jintao and gave him an idea: deploy the troops, force the Central Committee members to vote, and on the spot remove Xi Jinping, with insufficient votes allowing the gun‑barrel to take over.
Hu Jintao said it was not possible. The reason he gave boiled down to one sentence: today the army can take a gun and dismiss him, tomorrow they can take a gun and dismiss me. Once that door opens, from then on the party will listen to whoever has the most troops in hand. Think about the weight of that statement. It’s not that he doesn’t have a gun; the gun has already been handed to him, he just didn’t take it.
Then came the fourth incident. On January 20 this year, the person who proposed the idea got into trouble himself. Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, one the first vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the other the chief of staff of the Joint Staff Department, both fell on the same day.
According to the narrative released by the elders, these two were not simply ordinary downfalls; they were personally purged on that day. Four days later, on January 24, the Ministry of National Defense issued a notice saying the two had severely trampled on the responsibility system of the CMC chairman and were under investigation. They stabbed a general and then turned the accusation back on themselves, slapping a charge on them.
Should this time they finally be beaten? Or not? The troops were held in place, no gunfire. Over four years, Xi Jinping has made the situation more and more absolute, but Hu Jintao never chose the most direct route. So what exactly is he suppressing?
Three factions stand on his left and right. Wen Jiabao wants to pursue historical responsibility. In his view, Xi Jinping handing over his post is far from enough. Whoever participated in the constitutional amendment, who handled personnel purges, who pulled the strings must each be held accountable.
Hu Chunhua holds the settlement materials and the power to deal with cadres; he advocates digging deeper, refusing to hand over a few executors, and instead sealing the accounts. Zeng Qinghong fears the fire cannot be contained; he wants to draw a line for the case, let Xi Jinping exit with dignity, and seal all old accounts.
Wen Jiabao wants to pursue it to the end, Zeng Qinghong wants to seal the accounts quickly, and Hu Chunhua’s knife is already sharpened. These three sides can still sit at the same table today because they rely on Hu Jintao in the middle.
According to the current elder perspective, Hu Jintao’s handling principle is actually simple: anyone who actually acted, handled the constitutional amendment, or pressed the case cannot be left alive. But the peripheral cadres cannot be entirely turned into the Xi family army; they must be screened one by one, and those who can stay are kept.
What he wants is to eliminate Xi Jinping while preventing the ship from falling apart. He would rather suppress the fire himself than let the party and the army both overturn the table.
Hu Jintao’s restraint is not Xi Jinping’s talisman, but Xi’s final probation period. As long as Hu Jintao lives, he is not only leading the reformists; he is shielding Xi from the people behind him who are already ready for revenge.
Hu Jintao does not fire the gun; that is his own choice. Xi Jinping now wants to fire the gun, but that is no longer his choice.
In the July 23 program, we discussed how the army positioned itself after January 20 this year. Here we’ll just run through it in four sentences.
Liu Yuan went to Baoding. Baoding guards the heavy troops south of Beijing and the route into the capital. Wang Yang went to Kunming, taking with him the party’s authorization system, liaison channels, and documentary basis. Without the party’s legal procedures, whoever the army obeys becomes a military coup.
Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao stayed in Beijing. With these two seated, the troops do not obey Xi Jinping’s personal orders; it is not a general rebelling, but elders correcting one person’s authoritarianism.
West Mountain blocks the entire army’s strategic communications. Xi Jinping’s stamps and signatures in the office are useless; West Mountain does not let him access the war‑zone frequency band, so that order is just a piece of paper. This is the four‑compartment isolation.
Is this system still effective today? You don’t need my analysis; just watch where his steps go over the past half‑year.
From the day Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli fell on January 20 to today, more than six months later, no public report shows him entering any barracks, warship, or war‑zone organ.
Before the Spring Festival on February 10 this year, he did not go to a war zone or a barracks; he was in Beijing’s August 1 Building, with nine units lined up on screen, taking turns video‑calling him. During the Two Sessions he met army representatives at the Great Hall of the People.
On July 30 he hosted a collective Politburo study titled “National Defense and Military Modernization,” held at Zhongnanhai. On July 31 he signed a directive awarding a person, completed at his desk. Around Army Day he did not enter any camp, nor did he pose with any frontline commander.
Even more abnormal, Xi Jinping visited Shanghai twice this year. On April 30 he held a basic research forum in Shanghai; from July 15‑17 he inspected Shanghai again, attending the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
Shanghai itself is under the Eastern Theater Command, yet in both public itineraries he neither inspected any stationed Shanghai troops nor visited the Eastern Theater Command offices in Nanjing. A central CMC chairman visited the Eastern Theater Command’s territory twice, met local officials, researchers, community residents, and foreign guests, but never publicly met theater‑level generals.
One more thing to note. Two generals promoted in December last year and two more promoted on July 3 this year—four in total—none are his people.
But look before the January 20 incidents of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli. On February 2, 2024, before the Spring Festival, he personally went to the Tianjin‑garrisoned troops, met soldiers, took photos and gave a speech. On April 23 the same year, he visited the Army Medical University in Chongqing, and that year he also visited a Rocket Force brigade and at year‑end went to the Macau‑garrisoned troops.
On January 24, 2025, still before the Spring Festival, he went to Shenyang, entered the Northern Theater Command organ, met soldier representatives, and then watched other troops via video. On November 7 that year, when a Fujian ship was commissioned, he boarded the ship for inspection.
You see the pattern, right? Over the past years, every few months there’s been one such incident, and it’s especially consistent around the Spring Festival and around August 1. In the past he would walk into the troops and give orders; now the troops appear on his screen.
The screen can still light up, but he hasn’t truly entered the gun barrel for a long time.
Those few people in Zhongnanhai now calculate who makes the first move and who gets eliminated first. This kind of accounting is beyond ordinary citizens and shouldn’t be ours to do.
Alright, let’s continue. The regular army can no longer be mobilized by him, so what are these elders still afraid of? Since the guns have already been taken away, why still broadcast that death notice? Why does the outside wall have to release a whole issue that day? The answer lies on January 20 of this year.
The following paragraph is still from the elders’ perspective; treat it as a leak. On that day Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli got into trouble, and they weren’t using the regular army; the war zone had no idea. The incident happened at the Central Party School, a meeting venue.
Afterwards the elders reviewed and concluded one point: those two were careless. The location was provided by others, but the people walked in on their own. Before entering, no arrangement was made for the military to clear the venue first.
Do you understand the weight of this lesson? If you can’t beat them, you can at least not fight; they can wait for you in the room where you go to hold a meeting.
So who does this kind of work rely on? According to the elders, it’s not the regular army, nor the publicly listed police special forces, but a group of people cultivated over the years by Wang Xiaohong through cross‑border investigations, Southeast Asian black markets, overseas undercover work, and secret contact channels.
These people need only a few individuals, a vehicle, and a pre‑prepared location to get the job done.
After January 20, the elders and the military truly began to patch this loophole. The central guard system, police special forces—these overt forces are now being watched.
The Beijing garrison line controlled by Zeng Qinghong and the “red family” has also remained on high alert. Key figures such as Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, and Hu Chunhua can no longer rely on a single layer of security; the military must add another layer.
If any one of Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, or Hu Chunhua is killed, the current negotiations would end immediately. The military would deem that Xi Jinping’s side has abandoned power transfer and moved to physical elimination; reformists would conclude that the “red family” cannot guarantee negotiation safety; and the “red family” itself would start wondering whether the next target will be them.
At that point, no one dares to wait. It’s not that any side truly wants a civil war; everyone thinks, if I don’t strike first today, I’ll be the one who dies tomorrow.
Therefore Zeng Qinghong’s camp is also tense now. The Beijing garrison cannot be withdrawn, military protection cannot be relaxed, and the itineraries, venues, hospitals, and residences of key figures must all be re‑checked. The lesson of January 20 sits right there.
But the extent to which Wang Xiaohong’s overseas network has been cleared is still unknown.
At this moment Liu Guozhou becomes crucial. He originally worked in the Beijing police system, was later sent by Wang Xiaohong to Shenzhen as police chief, and then promoted to head of the Guangdong provincial police department.
Shenzhen and Guangdong police have, over the years, controlled extensive cross‑border enforcement, overseas undercover, secret liaison, and overseas stability‑maintenance channels. Who is dispatched, who handles contacts, who receives overseas incidents—these matters may not all go through formal Ministry of Public Security documents, but they likely pass through the Guangdong‑Shenzhen layer.
Thus the rumor that Liu Guozhou was taken away from outside the wall is significant; the real urgency is that someone has started seizing the ledger of Wang Xiaohong’s overseas network.
If Liu Guozhou speaks, the elders could learn at least three things: how many people Wang Xiaohong left abroad, who those people now answer to, and whether anyone has received unfinished missions.
The problem is that no one can now guarantee the list is complete. Some may have already been co‑opted, some are destroying materials and changing owners, and some may have long returned to Southeast Asia, completely cutting formal contacts.
The most dangerous are the last batch. Those who have cut formal ties may defect to survive, may act to silence, or may be a few remaining who are prepared to do one final thing for their former masters.
Looking back at the rumor about the death of Hu Jintao’s family makes it clear why Beijing is so nervous. Even if Xi Jinping has lost military control, he may still hide unknown secret armed groups.
That is the only variable that cannot be calculated right now. These secret forces can no longer restore Xi’s military power, but they could still kill someone, ruin an entire negotiation, and push Beijing straight to the brink of civil war.
First, calculate this for old Xi. Suppose he really ordered a hit and killed any one of Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, or Hu Chunhua—what would he gain?
As mentioned earlier, Liu Yuan is in Baoding, Wang Yang is in Kunming, communications are in Xishan; killing one person won’t retrieve any of those. Yet he would immediately face the military’s response.
Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli’s ledger
The army has endured from January this year until today without moving, because the higher-ups are suppressing it. If another elder dies, the pressure will break, and even Zeng Qinghong, who could speak a few words on his behalf, will have no recourse; the dignified resignation route is blocked, and the conservative side cannot even protect its own advocacy.
Thus reformists cannot save old Xi; if he makes a move, he will be eliminated on the spot.
So what does he truly lack now? He lacks the votes that supported him at the October meeting.
The CCP’s own Party constitution contains a clause that for members and alternate members of the Central Committee, any disciplinary action such as removal from Party posts, placement under Party observation, or expulsion from the Party must be decided by a two‑thirds majority vote of the full committee to which the individual belongs.
However, only full members can vote; alternates cannot. The 20th Party Congress elected 205 full members, and two‑thirds of that is 137. In other words, if Xi Jinping does not want to be removed, at least 69 members must abstain from voting on the proposal to discipline him.
According to overseas self‑media calculations, those 205 members are roughly divided into three groups: 40% reformists, 40% the “red families” around Zeng Qinghong, and 20% who still follow Xi. That 20% translates to about 41 votes supporting him, plus another 28 votes from Zeng Qinghong’s camp.
If Xi can secure a total of 69 votes, he cannot be removed.
Therefore, the reformists now need to split the 80‑plus votes that belong to Zeng Qinghong’s faction. This is a difficult task: they must reduce those 80‑plus votes to fewer than 28 that actually flow out, which is quite challenging.
There are two ways to do it. The most direct method is to remove from the venue those who still stand with him. This does not have to wait until the meeting day; as soon as a Central Committee member is placed under investigation, he cannot attend the plenary, and his vote is lost on the spot.
The vacant seat will not stay empty. The Party constitution also provides that when a Central Committee seat becomes vacant, alternates are promoted in order of the number of votes they received. There are 171 alternates waiting in line; whoever is removed is replaced by the next alternate, who immediately gains voting rights.
The people you bring in will certainly not support the old Xi.
The CCP has used this procedure before, and it was applied in a meeting that closely resembles today’s situation. In October 1968, at the 8th Central Committee’s 12th plenary session, the agenda was to expel Liu Shaoqi from the Party.
A problem arose: the 8th Central Committee had 97 members, 10 of whom had died, and the majority of the remainder were already under detention and review, leaving only 40 members able to actually enter the hall—less than half. By the rules, the meeting could not legally proceed.
The solution was to promote ten alternates on the spot to become full Central Committee members. Huang Yongsheng, Xu Shiyou, Chen Xilian, Han Xianchu, Wu De and others were among those promoted, bringing the total to 50—just over the required majority—so the meeting could be held.
The vote then passed the “Report on the Investigation of the Crimes of Traitor, Spy, and Saboteur Liu Shaoqi,” permanently expelling Liu Shaoqi from the Party.
Now the process of detaining Central Committee members has been going on for more than a year. In October 2025, Central Military Commission Vice‑Chairman He Weidong was expelled from the Party and the military. On January 20 of this year, the first Vice‑Chairman of the CMC, Zhang Youxia, and the Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff Department, Liu Zhenli, ran into trouble; on January 24 the Ministry of National Defense announced that both were placed under investigation.
Of the seven members of the Central Military Commission elected by the 20th Party Congress, only two remain on the roster. Those seats are all filled by Central Committee members, some of whom are also Politburo members.
There is also former Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Party Secretary Wang Lixia, a 20th Central Committee member, who was investigated on August 22, 2025, double‑investigated on February 12 this year, and indicted on June 3.
On July 14, Xinjiang’s Ma Xingrui was double‑investigated; he is a Politburo member. There is also Liu Jianchao, head of the International Liaison Department and a 20th Central Committee member. On September 30 last year, his name on the department’s website was changed to Liu Haixing. Foreign media reported that he was taken for questioning in August, and the CCP has not released a single word about it to date.
Thus the personnel change in the Hebei Provincial Party Committee on July 31 should be viewed differently. The central leadership decided that Luo Wen would replace Ni Yuefeng as Hebei Party Secretary, and Ni would no longer serve as Party Secretary or member of the Standing Committee—four characters meaning “reassigned elsewhere.”
Ni Yuefeng is a 20th Central Committee member. He was vice‑governor of Fujian in 2011, Party secretary of the Fujian Provincial Discipline Inspection Commission in 2013, Party secretary of Fuzhou in 2016—the same position Xi once held—then promoted to deputy Party secretary of Fujian Province, later moved to the General Administration of Customs, and in 2022 was transferred to Hebei, following the classic “Fujian clique” career path.
When he is moved, his influence over the few Hebei votes disappears instantly. Arriving in a new location with only two months left before the next meeting, how much impact can he generate? That is already a fairly good outcome. If he were to be investigated a bit more, another pro‑Xi seat would be vacant at the October meeting.
Now look at his successor. Luo Wen, born in 1964, is the same age as Ni Yuefeng. He has served as executive vice‑governor of Sichuan and deputy Party secretary of the province. After the 20th Party Congress, he was transferred to the State Administration for Market Regulation, retaining a minister‑level rank but with responsibilities reduced from an entire province to a single agency.
Overseas self‑media claim that Luo Wen was promoted by Li Keqiang, and that the transfer was a “promotion in name only, demotion in reality.”
Normally, a provincial Party secretary change is a routine retirement of the older official and promotion of a younger one. This time, the incoming and outgoing officials are the same age, so it is not a succession but a hand‑over of Hebei from one hand to another.
However, merely arresting people will not reach the two‑thirds threshold; the conservatives’ territory must also be cleared so that those under their influence neither vote nor stand with Xi.
For example, a complete sweep was already carried out in May of this year. Fei Gaoyun was investigated; on the surface, it was to appoint him as Party secretary of Hefei, but he had spent 29 years in Jiangsu and was a protégé of State Council Secretary‑General Wu Zhenglong, who is a close aide to Premier Li Qiang.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) moved against Gao Yun, not speaking to Gao Yun but to Li Qiang: Your people are already in my hands, you can decide which side to stand on next.
Behind Li Qiang is the entire State Council system, and he knows how many central committee members are there. This move, without even needing to touch a single hair of Li Qiang, is enough to recount that batch of votes.
On the night of July 31, Xin Bao'an, former Party Secretary and Chairman of State Grid, was investigated by the CCDI and the National Supervisory Commission. He had also stepped down in March 2024, and he is not on the list of the 20th Central Committee members nor on the list of alternate members.
Why target him? Look at his whole career—he rose from the power grid. Those who move the power system threaten the Li Peng family.
Li Peng became Vice Minister of the Power Industry in 1979, later served as Premier, and then spent five years as Chairman of the National People's Congress. His son Li Xiaopeng entered Huaneng in 1991 and rose to become Chairman of Huaneng International; his daughter Li Xiaolin went to Hong Kong in 1994 to set up China Power International.
The power sector has been their family's domain for decades. The central committee members of the power system that the Li Peng family can influence constitute a large bloc.
Therefore, investigating Xin Bao'an is not only about settling old scores between the Wen family and the Li Peng family from the late 1980s, but also a message to Zeng Qinghong: you may keep a respectable face for Xi Jinping, but if you really lend out those 28 votes, the next CCDI “tea invitation” will be for your own family’s old secretaries, stewards, and subordinates.
On July 31, the CCDI announced more than just Xin Bao'an. On the same day another person, Guo Wenqing, former General Manager of China Minmetals, was reported for serious disciplinary and legal violations and voluntarily turned himself in. He had retired for two years and walked in on his own.
China Minmetals is one of the largest central state-owned enterprises, with total assets in the trillions, holding the country's mineral import‑export rights; both domestic and overseas mines and the import‑export channels are under its control.
Guo Wenqing was placed in charge of Minmetals in 2016. Outside media reported that Guo was once the secretary of Li Zhanshu. Li's son‑in‑law Cai Huabo was then working at Minmetals Securities. Li's daughter Li Qianxin later moved to Hong Kong; her son‑in‑law obtained a Singapore passport, turned from a state‑enterprise employee into a Singaporean businessman with property and hotels in Hong Kong and the UK, and even owned a racehorse.
Money, in this case, is actually the least important thing. Li Zhanshu has long retired, he is not a central committee member, and he had no vote at the October meeting. Investigating his family’s money cannot retrieve a single vote.
So why go after him? Recall the hand at the closing ceremony of the 20th Party Congress. Hu Jintao sat there, reached for the document on the table, and the hand that stopped him belonged to Li Zhanshu.
From 2012 to 2017, Li Zhanshu served as Director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee. Xi Jinping’s documents, schedules, who sees whom, all passed through his desk.
In March 2018, the term limit for the President was removed. That constitutional amendment was approved at the first session of the 13th National People’s Congress, where Li Zhanshu was elected Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee for a five‑year term.
For the next five years, how that amended constitution would be used and how the NPC procedures would be handled were entirely in his hands.
Therefore, if Guo Wenqing only hands over a few mining deals and a few overseas accounts, that is still a minor matter. The real purpose is to pull Li Zhanshu to the table and strip him of any chance to stay silent.
What Wen Jiabao wants from him is the personnel package behind the constitutional amendment, the third term, the 20th Party Congress—who proposed it, who drafted it, who negotiated it, who suppressed dissenting opinions, and who packaged an individual’s will as a collective decision of the central leadership.
Think back to that 1968 document. At the 8th Central Committee’s 12th plenary, there were not enough people, so ten more were added just to hold the meeting. After the meeting, the item put to vote was a report titled “Investigation Report on the Crimes of Traitor, Spy, and Labor Saboteur Liu Shaoqi.”
The October meeting was the same. To force Xi Jinping out, enough heads had to be gathered, and a report had to be written. The earlier arrests, replacements, and appointments determined who could raise a hand in the hall. Tracing Guo Wenqing’s line upward is about filling that report line by line.
Why does this method work? The votes in Zeng Qinghong’s hand were originally meant for bargaining. As long as these people stay together, they can demand: Xi can step down, but old accounts cannot be investigated; positions can be handed over, but Li Zhanshu, the Li Peng family, and other “red” families cannot be dragged in.
Now Wen Jiabao is trying to break their bargaining courage.
When Guo Wenqing turns himself in, the Li family will first worry whether the daughter, son‑in‑law, and the Minmetals line will be fully exposed. When Xin Bao'an is investigated, the Li Peng family will worry whether State Grid will continue to follow the power system upward, and which company will be next—each will first protect its own children, assets, former staff, and enterprises.
As long as Wen Jiabao makes them understand that continuing to bear the cost of voting will reopen their old accounts, regardless of how the voting issue is labeled, they will ultimately vote in the direction required by the reformists.
Thus the most painful thing for Xi Jinping now is not that he has no knives in his hand, but that if he moves that knife again, he will be eliminated on the spot. Yet by staying still, he watches his supportive votes dwindle.
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