Xi Jinping Tried to Turn the Tables, but His Troop Request Was Rejected by Border Guards Before the Fifth Plenum! Vietnam War Veteran Li Zuocheng Appears in Beijing, Zhang Shengmin Caught in a Military Command Dilemma; Wen Jiabao Unleashes a “Civil Struggle” Killer Move, Forcing Xi to Hand Over the Chairmanship of the CMC! [Jiang Feng Vision 20261020, Episode 518]

This episode analyzes the fierce power struggle in Zhongnanhai on the eve of the Fifth Plenary Session. It points out that Xi Jinping attempted to bypass the conventional chain of command to transfer troops from the Inner Mongolia border defense forces into Beijing to turn the tables, but was refused by the commanding generals on the grounds of incomplete regulations; meanwhile, retired General Li Zuocheng's appearance at the National Reception attracted attention, and CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin found himself in a dilemma regarding military orders. On the ideological and political front, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection investigated Huang Qifan and Wu Hao in succession, enabling the veteran faction and the reformist faction to use disciplinary files to form a deterrent against members of the Central Committee, forcing Xi Jinping to completely surrender his power as Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

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Hello friends, welcome to Jiang Feng Horizon. That person in Zhongnanhai has an unchangeable flaw deep in his bones: once he gets fat meat in his mouth, he refuses to spit it out even if it kills him. Even if terms were agreed upon with others just the day before, the moment he sniffs a tiny opening to reverse the situation, he can turn around and break his word completely. Four years ago at the 20th National Congress, everyone should still remember it vividly. Before the meeting, all kinds of rumors circulated overseas, saying that the old comrades had already negotiated a handover plan where everyone took a step back to restore collective leadership. And the result? At the closing ceremony of the 20th National Congress, Hu Jintao was escorted out of the venue in front of the global press, while Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, and Hu Chunhua all stepped down from the Politburo. As for Old Xi himself, he renewed his term as General Secretary and CMC Chairman, and later took over the state presidency as well, without removing a single one of his three hats. That time, he succeeded. Now, with the official opening of the Fifth Plenary Session just a full week away, rumors about giving up power, stepping down, and landing gracefully are flying all over the place. Yet right at this critical juncture when the overall situation is about to be settled, the person at the very peak is probably looking to repeat his old trick. Look at October 16, when Old Xi suddenly took He Lifeng to Ulanqab in Inner Mongolia. Officially, it was said to inspect wetlands and green computing, but this trip beyond the Great Wall probably hid a shady political motive. Old Xi wanted to make a final comeback before the Fifth Plenary Session, overturning the power-transfer arrangement that was rumored to have been agreed upon. An extremely explosive piece of news has recently circulated outside: Old Xi's trip beyond the Great Wall was an attempt to bypass Beijing's complex surveillance network and directly borrow troops from border defense forces stationed in the northern region, preparing to quietly move the troops into Beijing before October 23. The Fifth Plenary Session opens on the 26th; as long as he holds a field combat force willing to obey orders in his hands, three days would be enough to completely reverse the political atmosphere inside and outside the Jingxi Hotel. At the same Fifth Plenary Session, both sides are eyeing the gun barrels, but when it comes to actually moving troops, whose word ultimately counts? Can the person holding the grand seal of the CMC truly get the troops to move, and on the other hand, why has a veteran general who long ago handed over active-duty military command become the crucial figure that all sides are fighting over at this very juncture?

Friends, when we look at this power drama in Zhongnanhai, the most fatal rule of all is that if you play the trick of burning the bridge after crossing the river too ruthlessly, the one who ends up drowning is usually yourself. Four years ago, around the time of the 20th National Congress, there has always been a narrative overseas that at the critical moment, Zhang Youxia led military forces to back him up and hold the ground behind the scenes. The family ties left by their fathers, coupled with Zhang Youxia's seniority and influence in the military, made this Vice Chairman Zhang the thickest crutch for Xi to secure his throne as Chairman of the Central Military Commission. According to common sense, once the country is secured, it should be time to reward merits and confer honors, but the three words "sharing the world" have never existed in Xi's dictionary. Zhang Youxia is the meritorious official who helped him stabilize military power, but precisely because Zhang Youxia is deeply entrenched in the military—the greater his merit and the higher his prestige—the more uneasy Xi feels in his heart. After all, if he can back you up today, what if he sings a different tune tomorrow? What will you use to deal with him? Therefore, as soon as the dust settled on the 20th National Congress, Xi began to wield the knife against Zhang Youxia's base in the military. The first stab went into the Rocket Force, where generals like Li Yuchao and Xu Zhongbo met with misfortune one after another, and even Wei Fenghe, who once managed the Rocket Force, could not escape. Immediately after, the second slash hit the equipment procurement system, and Li Shangfu, who had long managed the CMC Equipment Development Department, was also investigated. The military equipment procurement sector—the most lucrative and widely implicated area—was turned upside down, and the equipment system happened to be the old territory that Zhang Youxia had managed for many years. He had served as the head of the General Equipment Department and later managed the CMC Equipment Development Department. This anti-corruption storm extending one after another to his old network makes it hard not to associate it with the top leadership redistributing military power. To put it bluntly, when Xi needed Zhang Youxia in the past, these military networks were his reliance; once he secured his seat, these networks became mountain strongholds that had to be dismantled. But who are Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli? Both have experience fighting in the Sino-Vietnamese War and have climbed through the ranks in the military for decades. Seeing the people around them investigated one after another, could they just sit in the August First Building and wait for Xi to put a knife to their throats? Thus, the internal struggle within the Military Commission began to turn the tables, burning toward Xi's own confidants. Miao Hua controlled the military political work system and was a figure heavily relied upon by Xi in the military; He Weidong was the vice chairman who entered the CMC leadership after the 20th National Congress. But later, when Miao Hua got into trouble, He Weidong also fell into the political storm. Jiang Feng's interpretation of this military purge is that this is no longer Xi unilaterally plucking Zhang Youxia's wings, but rather the Zhang-Liu faction beginning to counterattack, targeting the two most important pillars of Xi within the Military Commission.

This is interesting. Xi Jinping originally intended to use anti-corruption as a pretext to root out Zhang Youxia's faction one by one, only to find that his own military cronies were also caught up in the process. You investigate my people, and I move against your generals; the leaders of the Central Military Commission, who once ate at the same table, have been forced into a life-or-death struggle. But Xi is not one to admit defeat. Seeing that he could not gain an advantage in a direct confrontation, he resorted to another of his signature tactics: playing the pig to eat the tiger, pretending to concede. Starting in October 2024, he frequently spoke of unity and the big picture, even bringing up the story of the Liuchi Alley. What is the story of Liuchi Alley about? You take a step back, I yield a few inches; let us not fight to the death over a wall. For ordinary people, this is called neighborly harmony, but in the context of the power struggle for military control in Zhongnanhai, it takes on a different flavor. One moment they were back and forth purging each other's factions, and suddenly the top leader was no longer aggressive, instead projecting an image of valuing harmony and willingness to compromise. Is this a real admission of defeat, or is he just pulling back his fist, waiting for the next strike? It was during this period that Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli gradually came to believe that Xi had accepted reality and was prepared to compromise under the existing arrangements. But they did not expect that what Xi was really waiting for was the moment his opponents let down their guard. The turning point was January 20th of this year. At that time, the Central Party School held a special seminar for principal leading cadres at the provincial and ministerial levels. Details leaked overseas suggest that Xi used this occasion to suddenly launch an attack, catching Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli off guard and arranging for his loyalist forces to take them into custody. In ancient court terms, this would be called a Hongmen Banquet. In Xi's own calculations, once the two biggest obstacles, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, were removed, who else in the Central Military Commission would dare to disobey? Wouldn't the seal of the August First Building return to his hands? But he miscalculated one thing: taking down a general is not the same as taking back the army they once commanded. The military is not like the local bureaucracy; when a local official replaces a governor, the subordinates can simply line up and pledge allegiance to the new boss. In the military, beyond official positions and ranks, there are decades-old superior-subordinate relationships, camaraderie, and the officers' own judgments regarding their future and safety. Xi can use organizational procedures to deal with Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, but he cannot force all the officers who once followed them to willingly switch their loyalty to him the next day. Moreover, who is Zhang Youxia? He was the one who helped Xi stabilize his military power back then. Now that he has become the target of a purge, what will the generals below think? If even Zhang Youxia cannot protect himself today, who will protect me tomorrow? This is the most troublesome consequence of the entire internal struggle for military power. After these rounds of life-or-death infighting, the hardest thing to restore is the trust among the generals. The most feared thing in the military is when everyone stands at attention and salutes on the surface, loudly proclaiming absolute obedience, but when it comes time to take political risks for the top leader, no one is willing to step forward. This is the dilemma Xi faces: he dismantled the old crutch that was Zhang Youxia, but he has not found a new one capable of supporting him. With the Fifth Plenary Session approaching, if he really wants to overturn the rumored power-sharing arrangements in the final week, what is the use of just sitting in Zhongnanhai and pounding the table? He needs an army that is truly willing to follow his commands. Thus, on October 16th, he turned his gaze toward the northern border.

Ulanqab in Inner Mongolia has become the latest stage for rumors of a final comeback attempt. On the bleak Inner Mongolia plateau swept by autumn winds, mid-October was already bitterly cold, and when the special train slowly pulled to a stop in Ulanqab, the temperature outside the carriage was approaching freezing point. As the man from Zhongnanhai stepped off the train, he was greeted by the biting cold wind of the northern frontier; accompanying him were only He Lifeng, Wang Weizhong, and Bao Gang, all of them pulling in their necks with grave expressions, looking as though they were attending a funeral service. As usual, the official press release was written in a bustling tone, stating that two locations were inspected: one was the green computing power center in the Chahar High-Tech Zone, and the other was the Huangqihai Wetland in Jining District, Chahar Right Wing Front Banner. However, the crux of the issue lies in the timing: with only a few days left before the opening of the Fifth Plenary Session, the balance of power within the entire system is shaking violently, and more than 300 Central Committee members who are about to hold the voting buttons each harbor their own secret agendas. At such a critical juncture, how could a supreme leader possibly have the heart to care about whether the servers in a machine room are spinning or how many migratory birds are in a lake. Even more abnormal is the geographical location; heading northwest from Ulanqab, it is only 150 kilometers away from the famous Zhurihe combined-arms tactical training base. In 2017, marking the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the man from Zhongnanhai wore a camouflage uniform and boarded an open-top off-road vehicle, holding that massive military parade that shook China and the world amidst the dust and sand of Zhurihe. At that time, he was full of high spirits, with two Vice Chairmen of the Central Military Commission standing rigidly behind him, tens of thousands of elite armored troops rolling like an iron torrent across the Gobi Desert, and the roar of helicopters filling the sky. Yet this time, the special train roared past right along the edge of Zhurihe, and he did not even dare to glance long in the direction of its gates. So what on earth was the man from Zhongnanhai plotting by making this trip through the freezing winds of the northern frontier. Overseas reports indicate that he secretly met with key officers of the northern defense forces, attempting to bypass the airtight surveillance network in Beijing to secretly transfer a fully formed elite armed force from the border defense group armies stationed in Inner Mongolia, demanding that the troops complete combat readiness assembly before October 23 and secretly head to standby positions around Beijing. The goal is singular: to surround the Jingxi Hotel once again with the barrel of a gun before the convening of the Fifth Plenary Session on October 26, placing a tight restriction on the members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and the Central Committee about to attend, and completely smashing the power-transfer agreements already negotiated by various factions.

However, this secret order, just as it was handed over to the commanding general of the troops, ran straight into a cold iron wall. In the underground combat command room of a certain group army stationed on the northern border, the late autumn night was dead silent. A confidential staff officer walked in quickly carrying a document bag sealed with top-secret red wax, turning around to tightly bolt the heavy soundproof door. The army commander and the political commissar looked at each other without a word. Under the dim, yellowish light of the desk lamp, the ultra-urgent directive—sent secretly by Xi Jinping's close confidants while bypassing the regular command chain—was spread out on the tabletop. Xi's handwriting was clear and legible, demanding that the unit get fully equipped and depart quietly under the guise of an emergency maneuver exercise to take up standby positions on the outskirts of Beijing before October 23. However, the two commanders' gazes swept past those few lines of urgent deployment orders straight to the bottom right corner of the document: the second signature column there was completely blank, lacking the signature of Zhang Shengmin, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and missing the combat code name of the Northern Theater Command Joint Operations Command Center. The political commissar crushed his cigarette butt viciously into the ashtray, his voice dropping to a whisper. There is only his signature, without the joint signature of the Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and it hasn't even passed the approval of the Operations Bureau of the Joint Staff Department. The army commander's hand holding the teacup hung in mid-air, his knuckles turning slightly pale. These two professional military officers understood the situation crystal clear—within the Chinese Communist Party's military, strict and unyielding rules regarding troop deployment procedures had long been established to guard against palace coups. In peacetime, the cross-regional movement of established field army units, especially marching right to the gates of the imperial capital, was the supreme taboos of all taboos. The regulations were extremely rigid; a troop deployment order was strictly prohibited from relying solely on a single leader's handwritten slip. It had to be jointly signed by at least two individuals—the Chairman of the Military Commission and a Vice Chairman—issued down to the theater commands and group armies, and additionally required the simultaneous signatures and seals of both top military and political commanders before any armor could roll out of the barracks. Lacking even a single signature meant, under the provisions of the military court, four blood-red characters: unauthorized deployment of troops. In a few days, the Fifth Plenary Session was going to show its cards at the Jingxi Hotel. The political commissar stared at the army commander, his gaze as icy as the frozen earth outside. Let's not talk about who is right and who is wrong for now; let's just ask one question: if something goes wrong after entering Beijing, whose account will this be charged to? If the person who makes us mobilize our troops today hands over power tomorrow, who will speak up for us the day after? The army commander sneered, slowly closing the document folder. After the September 13 incident involving Lin Biao, what was the fate of those Fourth Field Army generals who blindly followed the mobilization? And what was the fate of Xu Qinxian of the 38th Group Army when he resisted orders? Furthermore, with deputy commanders and chiefs of staff within the group army harboring their own agendas, who could guarantee that the moment the troops marched out, the theater discipline inspection commission's red telephone wouldn't ring? For commanding generals, the scariest situation was precisely this: a big shot's word today might change its mind tomorrow, but once the troops marched out of the barracks, whoever commanded the troops and gave the orders would have to bear the consequences in black and white with no way out. The army commander pondered for a while, and finally picked up a red pen to write down his reply stroke by stroke on the receipt: This army shoulders the heavy responsibility of northern combat readiness duty and border defense, and the border situation is severe. According to the regulations on the management of military troop mobilization, cross-regional deployment requires statutory joint signatures of two or more Military Commission leaders, and combat contingency plans must be issued through the Theater Joint Operations Command. Before the relevant procedures are complete, the troops will strictly guard their defense zone and find it inconvenient to maneuver, nor do they intend to intervene in the capital's routine defense. Every single word appealed to regulations, and every single sentence was a means of dodging responsibility, kicking the ball right back to Zhongnanhai. A few hours later, this receipt carrying the chill of the northern frontier was delivered to the private compartment of the special train parked on the wasteland. Xi stared at those neat bureaucratic characters, collapsing entirely into the sofa without uttering a word for a long time. Outside the train window, the night wind howled; with less than a week left before the rumored troop deployment deadline of October 23, he finally experienced firsthand what it meant for an order not to make it out of his own train compartment. He had originally thought that relying on the intimidating might of purging dissidents over the years and holding the Central Military Commission Chairman's seal, his subordinates might not dare to risk their lives, but they would surely never dare to disobey. Yet he forgot that when a supreme commander's prestige is swept away and the general trend is lost, those generals who were usually respectful always tightly grasp their own life-saving regulations in their hands. And what made his hair stand on end even more was that while his own troops could not be borrowed, over there in Beijing, his opponents had already pushed a fierce and murderous veteran of the Vietnam War, Li Zuocheng, into the spotlight. On the evening of September 30, the National Day reception was held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. CCTV's Xinwen Lianbao camera swept across the banquet hall, and among a crowd of current and retired senior party, government, and military officials, several long-absent old faces from the military appeared: former Military Commission Vice Chairman Fan Changlong, former Defense Minister Chang Wanquan, former Air Force Commander Ma Xiaotian, and former Chief of Staff of the Central Military Commission Joint Staff Department Li Zuocheng. Li Zuocheng had retired long before the 20th National Congress, but right on the eve of the Fifth Plenary Session, he reappeared at such an important occasion. Outside reports regarding Hu Jintao preparing military backup measures immediately pushed this retired general to the center of the political storm. What kind of weight did this old general carry? Throughout his life, Li Zuocheng fought his way out piles of corpses. In February 1979, when the Sino-Vietnamese border war broke out, 26-year-old Li Zuocheng was a company commander in the Guangxi border defense forces.

In that era, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military had not experienced large-scale foreign wars for many years, and there were not many young officers who had truly been on the battlefield. Li Zuocheng, leading over a hundred brothers, received orders to attack a Vietnamese border police post. At dawn on February 17, the artillery fire signaled the start of the battle. Li Zuocheng's company charged out from the starting position. On both sides of the nine-hundred-meter open ground ahead, there was intense artillery fire, with shrapnel flying everywhere and smoke billowing. For a company of soldiers to run across these nine hundred meters under the threat of enemy fire was not as simple as shouting "charge" on a training ground during peacetime. Yet, this unit reached the designated position in six and a half minutes, more than a minute ahead of the time required by their superiors. This was a combat experience he personally recounted in the 1980s when he participated in a report group for heroes and models. What is even more moving is that before the battle, a soldier in the 60mm mortar squad received a comfort letter written by a child. The young soldier could not bear to throw it away, kept it well, and was even thinking about writing back to the child after winning the battle. Just imagine that scene: a soldier around twenty years old, with bullets tucked in his belt and shells on his back, yet carrying a letter from a child in his heart. He did not know if he would survive to return, but before setting off, he was still thinking about how to write back after victory. It was with such a group of young people that Li Zuocheng fought in the border mountains for more than twenty days and nights. In that battle, his company, together with brother units, captured the enemy stronghold, repelled counterattacks, and finally earned a collective First Class Merit. They were awarded the title of "Sharp Knife Hero Company" by the Central Military Commission, and Li Zuocheng himself was honored as a combat hero.

Over the following decades, he rose from battalion commander, regimental commander, and division commander to become the commander of the 41st Group Army. In 2013, he was appointed commander of the Chengdu Military Region, promoted to general in 2015, and became the first commander of the PLA Ground Force after the military reforms at the end of that same year. By 2017, he took charge of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission (CMC) as Chief of Staff. From a young officer leading a company in a charge to a general sitting at the heart of the entire military's operational command, Li Zuocheng's military career was built step by step through battlefield units and command positions. This is not quite the same as Zhang Youxia. Zhang Youxia's father, Zhang Zongxun, was a founding general of the CCP, and the Zhang family had deep roots in the military left by the older generation. Li Zuocheng did not have such a pedigree; his military credentials came first from his own combat experience, followed by promotion level by level. In the military, rank is one thing, but prestige is another—especially in the Ground Force, where a track record of leading troops is highly valued. A general who has truly fought in wars and served as a commander of field units for a long time gives people a different impression than one who has risen primarily through administrative offices. Some of those who followed Li Zuocheng back then may have already retired, while others may still hold important positions in the military. Those who trained under him, participated in exercises with him, or underwent cadre evaluations under his command may have maintained military relationships for many years. This is the most unique aspect of military connections. In local government, when a leader changes, the secretarial team and the departments under their charge can be adjusted accordingly, but the superior-subordinate relationships and camaraderie formed in the military over decades cannot be erased by a single retirement notice.

However, having prestige as an old general does not mean he still holds military power. Li Zuocheng has now retired, and he has long since handed over his position as Chief of Staff of the CMC Joint Staff Department. According to the formal military command system, without an active-duty position, one cannot simply issue combat orders to a group army by saying, "I am your old commander." This pushes another person to the forefront: Zhang Shengmin. On October 23, 2025, at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CCP Central Committee, Zhang Shengmin was added as a Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Five days later, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress appointed him as a Vice Chairman of the State Central Military Commission. If you look up Zhang Shengmin's resume, you will find that these two generals have taken completely different paths. Li Zuocheng comes from field units, rising from a grassroots company commander to the center of the military's operational command; Zhang Shengmin has long served in the political work system of the Second Artillery Corps and the Rocket Force, later serving as the political commissar of the CMC Training and Administration Department and the Logistic Support Department, before transferring to become the Secretary of the CMC Commission for Discipline Inspection. Li Zuocheng's expertise was in how troops fight and how generals lead them; Zhang Shengmin has long dealt with military organization, cadre discipline, and political supervision. To put it plainly, Li Zuocheng's trade is leading troops, while Zhang Shengmin's trade is managing people. Yet, as it stands, Zhang Shengmin holds the formal position of CMC Vice Chairman, while Li Zuocheng only has the status of a retired general. This creates a very interesting situation: those with formal military leadership positions may not have the field experience of the old general, while those with decades of military prestige no longer hold active command power. If Xi really wants to mobilize the military before the Fifth Plenary Session, knowing who is on good terms with him is no longer enough; for the troops to actually take action, orders must enter the formal command system. As a CMC Vice Chairman, Zhang Shengmin is a high-ranking leader with legal status in this system. Although Li Zuocheng is retired, he may still have a group of officers who are familiar with him and respect him as their old commander. The military resources represented by these two men are fundamentally different. The one in a truly difficult position is likely Zhang Shengmin. This CMC Vice Chairman, who emerged from the military's discipline inspection system, knows better than anyone the political risks behind any major military decision. If Xi really wants to mobilize field troops to enter Beijing to bolster his position, Zhang Shengmin must weigh whether the military order he signs today might become evidence used to hold him accountable tomorrow if the political situation changes at the Fifth Plenary Session. Li Zuocheng is different; although he lacks active military power, he possesses the prestige accumulated from decades of leading troops. One sits in the position of CMC Vice Chairman and must bear responsibility for military orders; the other is retired but may still influence the judgment of his former subordinates. This is the most subtle difference between the two.

Therefore, Li Zuocheng's appearance at the National Day reception on September 30 sparked discussions at this critical juncture. Overseas news regarding the military backup plan of the Fifth Plenum linked him to Hu Jintao, suggesting that Wen Jiabao was responsible for negotiations while Li Zuocheng anchored the military side. But the problem was that even if Li Zuocheng's former subordinates were willing to listen to his opinions, when it came to actually taking military action, they still had to face the command system of the active-duty military. This was quite interesting: while Xi Jinping held the official seal of the Central Military Commission (CMC), news spread that he was borrowing troops from everywhere; Li Zuocheng had already handed over his military command, yet he was pushed as a key figure in the military backup plan; and Zhang Youxia—wait, the person actually sitting in the CMC vice chairman position, Zhang Mingguo... correction, Zhang Shengmin, happened to be a discipline inspection veteran who best understood political risks. With three people holding three different bargaining chips of power, in the final days before the Fifth Plenum, whoever could turn their political intentions into genuinely executed military orders was the most critical question. When this account was calculated, it also factored in the CCP elders who wanted to maintain the status quo. Because if the military card was merely placed on the table to intimidate others, there was still room for negotiation; once someone actually played it, even the negotiators might no longer be able to control the situation. This was precisely the most difficult predicament for conservative factions like Zeng Qinghong. In this power struggle, they had to consider not only whether Xi Jinping was willing to step down, but also whether the faction of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao would carry out the purge to the end. If the two sides only contested personnel and positions, there was still room for bargaining, but if someone dragged the military into it, the entire negotiation table might be upended. These people had also walked through the various political storms of the CCP back in the day. In 1976, the smashing of the Gang of Four appeared to be a top-level political decision on the surface, but behind the scenes, it was inseparable from the cooperation of security forces. By 1989, Beijing once again saw a situation where the military intervened in a major political crisis, and military officer Xu Qinxian refused to execute the martial law order, ultimately paying a heavy personal price. Therefore, the gun could become the heaviest bargaining chip in political negotiations, but once truly utilized, the consequences might become uncontrollable for all parties. The problem was that when both sides began to consider military power, whether the previously agreed-upon conditions would still count remained uncertain; thus, the power struggle before the Fifth Plenum returned to another table.

In the smokeless backroom of the CCP, all political showdowns ostensibly compared party statutes and regulations, but secretly they calculated two ledgers: one was the dossier in the hands of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), and the other was the bayonet in the hands of the field army. This was what the outside world had recently been calling literary struggle (wendou) and armed struggle (wudou). The so-called literary struggle was essentially a millimeter-precise institutional strangulation. The Fifth Plenum was scheduled from October 26 to 29. According to the party constitution, members of the Politburo Standing Committee and the General Secretary were elected by the Central Committee plenary session, and the composition of the CMC was decided by the plenary session. To actually change the top-level personnel list, one still had to pass the hurdle of more than 200 members of the Central Committee. The man in Zhongnanhai originally thought that as long as Cai Qi still controlled the Central Secretariat, the members of the Central Committee would behave just as they did in previous plenums—as long as he coughed on the podium, no one underneath would dare not raise their hand. But he did not expect that this time, his opponents were targeting not just the seats on the podium, but the discipline inspection dossiers about to be delivered to the Central Committee members. Just over ten days before the opening of the plenum, the CCDI suddenly launched two heavy bombs with lightning speed. On October 13, Huang Qifan, former mayor of Chongqing who had been retired for nearly ten years, was officially announced to be under investigation; immediately the next day, Wu Hao, former secretary-general of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), was announced to have been expelled from the Communist Party and dismissed from public office, with the charges unusually specifying that he had severely interfered in three core powers: investment approvals, listing reviews, and enterprise qualifications. These two heavy blows left the entire Beijing officialdom instantly dead silent. Who was Huang Qifan? He was a veteran operator who had roamed for decades between the Jiang faction, Wu Bangguo's family, and the family at the apex of power, holding the inventory of overseas assets of countless red-chip families; and the approval threshold of the NDRC controlled by Wu Hao was connected behind the scenes to the commercial channels of countless provincial- and ministerial-level officials and their relatives. Liu Jingguo detaining these two individuals in the hands of the CCDI was equivalent to laying out a clear funding and relationship network map covering the core interests of the entire party on the table. This was the most powerful literary struggle weapon in the hands of Wen Jiabao and Hu Chunhaoyu... correction, Hu Chunhua. Every one of the more than 200 Central Committee members about to step through the gates of the Xijingshan Hotel had to weigh in their hearts before picking up their voting devices: whether their own integrity dossiers, overseas asset lists of family members, or black-and-white signatures dealing with certain special projects over the past few years had already been packed into the case team's archival bags. Officials were seasoned foxes; everyone already had a definite idea in their hearts before stepping into the venue as to whose ballot would save their lives and whose would spell doom.

However, verbal battles alone are not enough to completely lock down the political situation, because in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), when dictators face catastrophic doom, their most habitual trick is to flip the table. Back then, Hua Guofeng arrested the Gang of Four and Deng Ping mobilized troops into Beijing; at the final critical moment, every single one of them relied on absolute military force to deliver the final blow. Old Xi's original conceived retreat was to hand over the position of General Secretary to a powerless confidant, while continuing to stubbornly cling to the throne of Chairman of the Central Military Commission, ruling from behind the curtain like Deng Xiaoping did back then, waiting for the opportunity to make a comeback. However, as soon as the news of Old Xi secretly seeking military support in Inner Mongolia spread, it completely shattered the illusions of the conservatives. What the conservatives feared most was loss of control; they knew very well that once guns were truly drawn on both sides, the lid on the military taking over the Beijing system would be completely blown off, and under even harsher sanctions from the West and violent domestic shocks, no one would be able to stay out of it. This dangerous move by Old Xi to try to mobilize troops beyond the Great Wall not only failed to win him any bargaining chips for a comeback, but instead completely pushed the centrists, who originally wanted to say a few good words for him, directly to the opposite side. Even the elders who had always advocated for stability maintenance finally saw clearly that this person was beyond reason; as long as a tiny crack of military power was left to him, he would drag the entire party down to be buried with his imperial dream at any time. The military's attitude had only one bottom line: if there is to be a replacement, it must be a complete replacement; the military could no longer bear a supreme commander who does not understand military affairs, changes orders overnight, and arbitrarily purges people. If this series of military power shifts and setbacks in borrowing troops are true, then the only path left for Old Xi is likely to be: either completely surrender power, or face an even uglier political showdown at the plenary session. Thank you friends for watching

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