Frontline Defiance! Old Xi's Handshake in New Delhi Fails to Remove Himalayan Tents; Ratification of Zhang and Liu Enrages a Million Ground Troops, Hu Jintao's "Three Air, One Ground" List Too Sensitive to Reveal! Inside Story of Old Xi's Two Resignation Letters at the Plenary Session [Jiang Feng Vision 20261031 Episode 528]
This episode details the behind-the-scenes power handover and military standoff surrounding the conclusion of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The program points out that mysterious tents on the snowy peaks of the Himalayas on the China-India border became the fuse for millions of ground troops to pressure Beijing, while the "three air, one ground" structure in the newly drafted list for the Central Military Commission completely infuriated the ground forces. As party elders intervened to pressure the leadership and Old Xi read his resignation letter, the two-million-strong military fell into a state of division, ushering the CCP high command into an era of cold division.
Video link:
Full text:
Hello friends, welcome to Jiang Feng Horizon. In the closing footage of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th CCP Central Committee broadcast on CCTV's Xinwen Lianbo, if you press pause and scan the venue carefully with a magnifying glass, you will find something that simply defies explanation. Looking down from the rostrum, the seats are divided into four major columns. In the third column, fifth row, across an entire long table, ten white porcelain teacups are lined up in a row, yet not a single chair behind the table is occupied. While the rows before and behind are packed, this particular row is empty. The empty table with ten teacups was also present at last year's Fourth Plenary Session. In last year's broadcast, the panoramic view of the venue was shown for a full thirteen seconds, with that row of empty tables placed squarely in the center of the screen for the entire country to see. At this year's Fifth Plenary Session, the panoramic view was given only five seconds. Overseas commentators claimed that this row was reserved for purged military bosses who failed to show up, leaving their seats empty. But if you look back at the broadcast footage, committee members in military uniforms are scattered across various rows, sitting mixed with those in Western suits, without forming any distinct cliques. What makes even less sense is that this position also had ten teacups last year, and ten teacups again this year. After a year of arrests, the number of absentees could not possibly match down to the exact digit. This row of seats is permanently reserved for a fixed group of people. They attended as observers last year, and they arrived this year as well. With the teacups set out and the seats reserved, and the camera panning across them time and again, this was a message intended for the entire Party: these people are still around. Mainland bloggers claimed that these were the positions of decision-making and consultative coordination organs—veterans and old military bosses such as Wen Jiabao, Li Ruihuan, and Zeng Qingqing. Just ten minutes before CCTV reporters were allowed into the hall with their cameras, those elderly people with pale, stern faces were still sitting in those seats, until Old Xi, at the closing meeting in the Great Hall of the People, read out his statement of resignation due to illness for the second time before all members of the Central Committee, after which that group of elders slowly stood up and withdrew through the side door.
Yet as soon as the plenary session adjourned, even more bizarre events followed one after another. The day after the closing session on October 30, the four major organs—the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the State Council, and the National People's Congress—rushed to hold transmission meetings, which Xinwen Lianbo broadcast one after another. However, not a single word was mentioned about a transmission meeting for the Central Military Commission. Even more eeriely, the air force grandly announced that it would dispatch aircraft from the August 1 Aerial Demonstration Team to fly over the Huangyaguan Great Wall, flexing its muscles in the skies right next to Beijing. Why was Old Xi forced to hand in his resignation letter while his name still hung high in the official communiqué, why was the military commission unable to hold even a single transmission meeting, and why did the air force have to fly warplanes over the Great Wall—driving Old Xi to snap the pencil in his hand at the Jingxi Hotel? What kind of top-secret dossier was this?
Far away, how that row of ghostly tents on the Himalayan snow-capped mountains managed to press a cold bayonet directly against the throat of the supreme commander. In late July of this year, in the eastern section of the Sino-Indian border, near Taksing in the Upper Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh, at the foot of snow-capped mountains several thousand meters above sea level, a unit of the People's Liberation Army suddenly crossed the Line of Actual Control defined by the Indian side, pushing six or seven kilometers inward. Upon arrival, these soldiers built no fortifications and fired no shots; they simply pounded a row of military tents right into the hilltop and stayed put. Why specifically in late July? By that time, rumors from Beijing had already reached the troops that the cases of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were to be finalized at the Fifth Plenary Session in the autumn, ratifying their expulsion from the Party. The tents were pitched precisely at that moment. No general signed an order, nor was one needed; border defense troops patrolling across the Line of Actual Control has always been routine business. This time, the patrol team walked over and did not return. The reports sent upward claimed normal patrol control; the Tibet Military District received it, the Western Theater Command received it, and no one exposed it or ordered a retreat. The ruthlessness of this move lay in the fact that Beijing could seize no handle—without firing a shot it was not considered mutiny, and under the guise of a patrol it was not considered overstepping authority. If Beijing were to hold the patrol team accountable, it would be equivalent to admitting that the frontline troops no longer obeyed orders. The meaning of the tents was also crystal clear: do not touch the case of General Zhang. In late August, Beijing struck the first blow, stripping Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli of their qualifications as deputies to the National People's Congress, while the tents on the hilltop remained motionless. By October 22, four days before the opening of the Fifth Plenary Session, the director of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police personally came out to confirm to the media that this row of tents was still firmly nailed in place, and the military standoff between the two armies had not stopped for a single minute. From July to October, a full three months, China and India intensively held three rounds of high-level border talks. The result? Not a single tent on the hilltop was withdrawn. On September 12 of this year, Xi Jinping personally flew to New Delhi accompanied by Cai Qi, smiling broadly and shaking hands with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make peace. Logically speaking, since the supreme commander himself went to shake hands, the border defense troops underneath should at least give some face and withdraw the tents. They did not withdraw. That row of tents on the hilltop was not listening to the orders of Xi Jinping at all; it listened to the Western Theater Command, which was formed by the merger of the former Chengdu Military Command and Lanzhou Military Command—a stronghold cultivated by Zhang Youxia for a full 26 years. From serving as a company commander in the 14th Group Army during the Sino-Vietnamese War all the way to becoming the commander of the 13th Group Army, Zhang Youxia had been tempered on the southwestern battlefront. Today, on the Himalayan mountaintops, how many of the division, brigade, and regiment commanders leading troops through wind and snow are his protégés? In January of this year, their old commander went to the Central Party School for a meeting and never walked out of the front gates again. Could these army generals swallow this insult?
Even more remarkable is that using the tents on the Sino-Indian border as a political bargaining chip to pressure Beijing has a precedent within the PLA. The earth-shattering Galwan Valley conflict six years ago was personally initiated by He Weidong to fight for a breakthrough, establishing prestige for Xi Jinping's Fujian 31st Group Army faction and seizing more right to speak within the Military Commission. Just as the 31st Group Army used the border as a bargaining chip back then, today it was the millions of ground troops returning the favor in kind. Speaking of this, you will surely ask: since the army has such guts, why only play a stare-down game with Indian soldiers nose-to-nose on the mountaintop? Why not just fire a few shots to escalate the matter so that those people in the Jingxi Hotel would have to hand over their military command even more submissively? What the army wanted precisely was a standoff without opening fire. Why? Because once shots are actually fired and it evolves into a large-scale border war, under the still-unrepealed system of ultimate responsibility by the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, only Xi Jinping—who nominally still holds the title of Chairman of the Military Commission—has the qualification to sign and issue combat orders. The army utterly despises Xi Jinping for causing the death of Zhang Youxia, so how could they hand a knife to Xi Jinping, allowing him to regain military power through a state of war? Therefore, the army on the mountaintop calibrated the stakes down to the millimeter. This pot of water needed to be hot enough to make Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, and the three air force generals in the Jingxi Hotel feel that they were each sitting on a powder keg, making them realize that without the army's commander-in-chief even border defense could not be stabilized, but it must never be allowed to boil over, never letting it get hot enough to require Xi Jinping to sign and issue an order. The people in the Jingxi Hotel likewise saw through the army's bottom line: the army dared not fire. Therefore, at the Fifth Plenary Session, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were still posthumously expelled, not a single step was yielded, and the tents remained nailed to the hilltop without a single one being withdrawn. Yet this row of tents will eventually have to be withdrawn; once a top-down rotation order is issued and a few regiment or brigade commanders leading the troops are transferred away, the tents will be pulled up. But then again, can suppression for a moment last forever? Look at the various theater commands of the CCP: the Eastern Theater Command and Southern Theater Command rely on the sea, where the navy and air force play the leading roles. The Western Theater Command is different—Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan cover over half of China's territory, featuring snow-capped mountains, plateaus, and gobi deserts, all relying on the two legs of the ground army. The Western Theater Command is the headquarters of the entire ground army. Zhang Youxia operated along this line for 26 years, and these soldiers were brought up by him. The tents can be withdrawn, but this resentment cannot be removed. This fire has thus been buried deep within the ground army of the western borderlands, and when it will flare up again depends entirely on how Beijing treats the army next.
The fuse on the snowy mountains at the front line is sizzling, yet why is it that after the plenary session concluded, the August First Building could not even hold a briefing to convey the results? It is because as soon as the wind leaked about the predetermined list for the Central Military Commission (CMC) special task force inside the Jingxi Hotel venue, the millions of ground troops below immediately erupted in anger. Look at the list presented: the four generals to be added to the CMC are Central Theater Command Commander Han Shengyan, Eastern Theater Command Commander Yang Zhibin, Air Force Commander Wang Gang, and Military Discipline Inspection Commission Secretary Zhang Shuguang. Laying out the backgrounds of these four, three are from the Air Force, and the only one with a ground force background, Zhang Shuguang, is in discipline inspection and political work, having never led troops in battle. Add to that Lieutenant General Chen Deming, who heads the CMC Political Work Department and is also from the Air Force, and the only CMC Vice Chairman, Zhang Shengmin, who is from the Rocket Force and handles political work—in a command structure overseeing two million troops, there is not a single ground force general who knows how to fight. This is the absurdly ridiculous 'three air, one ground' setup. For decades, the CMC table has always been occupied by the ground forces; the 19th CMC Vice Chairman in charge of combat, Zhang Youxia, and Chief of the Joint Staff Li Zuocheng were both ground force. The 20th CMC's two Vice Chairmen, Zhang Youxia and He Weidong, plus Chief of the Joint Staff Liu Zhenli, were all ground force. Yet, of the nine people handpicked by Xi for these two terms, only Zhang Shengmin remains in office today. Furthermore, with Xi's military reforms, the ground force establishment has been slashed repeatedly, with money and equipment piled into the Navy and Air Force. To this day, the ground forces still have the most troops, but the stars of their generals have been completely cut off. Conversely, the Air Force, which had been suppressed for decades like a stepchild because Lin Biao and his son tried to use it to strike from the sky against the north, was gradually promoted under Hu Jintao. Last December, Han Shengyan and Yang Zhibin were promoted to general on the same day; this July, Wang Gang was promoted to general. In the blink of an eye, the 'three air, one ground' faction has taken over the CMC. How did the anger of the ground forces rise layer by layer to directly gag those in the CMC? It passed through five real, life-and-death hurdles within the military.
The first hurdle was pushed up directly from the theater command compounds. In the three major theater commands—Central, Western, and Northern—group armies are everywhere. These are the ground force loyalists brought up by Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli. Han Shengyan and Yang Zhibin, these two Air Force generals, were almost retired at the age limit for lieutenant generals when Xi took control of the military. Having just donned the general's uniform to take over the Central and Eastern Theater Commands, the ground force generals below them simply did not accept it. When the Air Force commander issued an order, the ground force division and brigade commanders below did not even lift an eyelid; the two theater commands almost lost control on the spot. In the end, it was Hu Jintao who urgently invited former CMC First Vice Chairman Fan Changlong, a veteran of the ground forces, to call the ground force generals in the theater commands one by one to appease them, barely managing to keep the situation under control.
The second hurdle was blocked directly at the main gate of the Joint Staff Department in the August First Building. The dissatisfaction of the theater ground forces followed the chain of command and gathered directly at the CMC Joint Staff Department. Currently, the person managing the daily work of the Joint Staff is Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Zhu Chuansheng, and the person in charge of the Central Guard Bureau in Zhongnanhai is Zhou Hongxu. Both are ironclad ground force officers who came out of the 41st and 14th Armies, the troops personally brought up by Li Zuocheng and Zhang Youxia. However, in this new CMC list, Zhu Chuansheng and Zhou Hongxu were both shut out because their seniority as lieutenant generals was insufficient. Don't look at the fact that Zhang Shengmin holds the titles of CMC Vice Chairman and Politburo member; he is from a political work background. Without the coordination and order-issuing of ground force staff officers like Zhu Chuansheng in the Joint Staff Department, Zhang Shengmin cannot even mobilize a single company in the August First Building; the CMC's orders cannot even leave Beijing.
The third hurdle was the ground force generals across the military crying to the old military leaders, with the fire reaching Li Zuocheng and Fan Changlong. The army commanders in the theaters and the generals in the Joint Staff could not swallow this insult and went to their old chief Li Zuocheng and Fan Changlong, who is responsible for liaising with old military leaders, to demand an explanation. The ground force generals made their point crystal clear, and the original words were passed directly to the top floor of the August First Building: since ancient times, only the ground forces have been able to serve as the CMC Vice Chairman in charge of military affairs and responsible for unified combat command; the Air Force cannot do it, the Navy cannot do it, and the Rocket Force even less so.
The fourth hurdle was the old military leaders and the conservative faction directly slamming their knives onto the conference table at the Jingxi Hotel. Li Zuocheng kept the big picture in mind and did not flip the table in the task force, but the ground forces under him absolutely refused to accept this. Once Zeng Qinghong's conservative faction saw the opportunity, they immediately fanned the flames of the ground forces' anger. On October 28, the third day of the Fifth Plenary Session, the joint proposal that the old military leaders slammed onto the table at the Jingxi Hotel began with a murderous warning: the China-India border has become tense again recently, and a large-scale armed conflict is very likely. Once an armed conflict occurs, without the unified command of the Central Military Commission, the CCP military could suffer a major defeat. They then revealed their bottom line: in the current CMC, there is not a single ground force officer who knows how to fight. If they want to hold the line when a skirmish breaks out at the border, they must let the old ground force commander Li Zuocheng serve as acting CMC Vice Chairman for two years to directly take charge of the military command of the entire armed forces. The tents on the snowy mountains are the fuse, and this proposal is the price the ground forces have clearly laid out on the table.
In the fifth stage, the Jingxi Hotel did not grant the Vice Chairman his official seal, and the Army immediately turned around and publicly drew its sword in the military newspaper. Inside the venue, Hu Jintao only agreed to let Li Zuocheng join the internal task force, without giving him the official seal of Vice Chairman. As a result, just as the plenary session concluded, the fourth page of the PLA Daily on October 30th published that commentary which made everyone in Zhongnanhai break into a cold sweat: "Strengthening the ambition, backbone, and confidence of revolutionary soldiers." The article quoted a cliché of Xi Jinping, and the second paragraph immediately smashed out an ancient saying: "The commander of the three armies can be captured, but the will of a common man cannot be taken away." Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, these two commanders of the Army, you may have stripped them of their positions by raising your hands in the meeting, and you may be blocking Li Zuocheng's Vice Chairman seal, but no one can take away the ambition and fury in the hearts of the million-strong Army soldiers. This is why on the night of October 30th, while the four major leadership bodies were bustling with transmission meetings, the Central Military Commission did not even dare to turn on the lights. Because from the theater commands to the Joint Staff Department, from the old military leaders to the layout of the military newspaper, the Army had already laid down its final word. Hu Jintao may have finalized this "three air, one land" team, but as long as they dare to display this seating arrangement at a transmission meeting, the Army below would dare to turn against them on the spot.
Just as the Army was holding Hu Jintao by the throat with tents on the Himalayan peaks and military newspaper editorials, Zeng Qinghong was smiling as he drilled into this crack, his calculations sharper than anyone else's. He saw that the Army was full of evil fire because of the "three air, one land" arrangement, and immediately took the conservative elders to pounce on the opportunity. Outside the venue, he desperately tried to win over Li Zuocheng, patting his chest to demand the acting Vice Chairman of the Military Commission chair for him. In Zeng Qinghong's eyes, Li Zuocheng was promoted by Jiang Zemin back in the day; during the 1994 flood relief in Guangxi, Li Zuocheng led the troops at the forefront, and in 1997 he was promoted from Senior Colonel to Major General. Zeng Qinghong felt that they had the grace of discovery toward Li Zuocheng. Now that Zhang Youxia is gone, if we help Li Zuocheng snatch the official seal of the Military Commission Vice Chairman from Hu Jintao, wouldn't the command sword of the two-million-strong army return to our conservative faction? But Zeng Qinghong calculated everything, yet missed the most fatal thing: the bones of a soldier are never beads on a politician's abacus. Li Zuocheng took the Vice Chairman chair handed over by Zeng Qinghong and weighed it in his hand; it was covered in the blood of his life-and-death brothers Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, which had not yet dried. Li Zuocheng, Zhang Youxia, and Liu Zhenli had a bond forged in life and death in the foxholes on the southern frontier. Back then, Zhang Youxia pushed Li Zuocheng into the 19th Military Commission, and at the 20th National Congress, when Li Zuocheng reached his term limit, he personally helped his little brother Liu Zhenli ascend to take his place. But in January of this year, when Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were ambushed and poisoned in Beijing, who was behind the scenes making dirty deals with Xi? At the end of August, who signed to dismiss their representative qualifications? And at the Fifth Plenary Session, who raised their hands in favor of expelling them from the Party, completely welding shut the possibility of rehabilitation? It was precisely this group of honey-mouthed, sword-hearted conservative politicians led by Zeng Qinghong who, in order to keep the system from collapsing, personally sold out Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli. With this stab, the little bit of promotion grace from Jiang Zemin was long ago squandered by these politicians. Li Zuocheng saw it more clearly than a mirror; the Army soldiers pushed him out to seek justice for the fallen commanders and to fight for a way out for the purged Army. But if he were to take the crutch handed over by Zeng Qinghong, he would be stepping on the corpses of Zhang Youxia to dye his own cap red. The Army can argue over seating arrangements and cause trouble with Hu Jintao, but toward the Xi group and these politicians who signed to sell out their friends, it is a blood feud carved into their bones. Therefore, Zeng Qinghong desperately tried to drill into this crack in the Military Commission, only to be blocked by Li Zuocheng, who stood his ground and kept him firmly outside the door.
Some asked, since Li Zuocheng is impervious to both soft and hard tactics, will the secret forces under Cai Qi and Wang Xiaohong who are still alive around Xi act like cornered dogs and, like the ambush on Zhang Youxia in January, strike at Li Zuocheng? They wouldn't dare even if they had ten times the courage. When Zhang Youxia was killed in January, the Army was deceived. Today, if anyone dares to touch a hair on Li Zuocheng, there is no need to wait for deployment orders; the field armored units stationed in Beijing would flatten the Nine Gates on the spot. The "dignified resignation due to illness" talisman that Xi just obtained would be torn to shreds in an instant.
If you zoom the satellite lens to the highest point and overlook this two-million-strong army after the conclusion of the Fifth Plenary Session, it has become a behemoth that makes all the high-ranking officials in Zhongnanhai wake up in the middle of the night. The sky belongs entirely to Hu Jintao and the reformists; fighter jets circle over the Great Wall, and missiles are fueled in underground silos. The hammers in the sky can drop a precision-guided web of fire at any time, but the problem is that bombs can kill people but cannot occupy a city. You can't just throw Dongfeng missiles at Zhongnanhai and the CCTV building. The ground has fallen entirely into the hands of Li Zuocheng and the million-strong Army. The garrison of Beijing and the guards of Zhongnanhai are the Army's own people, and the Army has the most personnel in all major theater commands. The Army can seal the city and cut off food supplies, and can surround the Jingxi Hotel like an iron bucket, but when they look up at the sky, they are also wary of the supersonic fighter jets roaring past. No one submits to anyone, and no one dares to pull the first trigger. Thus, a bizarre drama unprecedented in Chinese history has been staged: the handshake of the supreme commander cannot take down the tents on the 4,000-meter snow-capped peaks; the Southern Theater Command closes its doors like an independent kingdom; the Air Force roars in the sky to show its muscles; and the Army slams the table and curses in the PLA Daily. How can this still be called "absolutely listening to the Party's command"? On this night when the Fifth Plenary Session dispersed, the two-million-strong army was officially torn in half, falling into a cold, divided era where the sky and the ground are managed separately, and theater commands and military branches are all harboring their own ulterior motives.
If you press the pause button during the closing broadcast of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th CCP Central Committee on CCTV's Xinwen Lianbo and carefully scan the venue, you will notice something that defies all logic. Looking down from the presidium, the seating is divided into four main columns. In the fifth row of the third column, across a long stretch of table, ten white porcelain teacups are neatly lined up, yet not a single chair behind the table is occupied. While the rows before and behind are packed, this particular row is completely empty. This empty table with ten teacups was also present at last year's Fourth Plenary Session. Outside the firewall, some claimed that this row was reserved for purged military top brass who were unable to attend, leaving their seats empty. But if you look back at the Lianbo footage, military-uniformed committee members are scattered across various rows, sitting mixed in with those in suits, not clustered together at all. What makes even less sense is that there were ten teacups at last year's Fourth Plenary Session, and this year, in the exact same spot, there are still ten teacups. This row of seats is permanently reserved for a specific group of people: the decision-making and consultative coordination bodies, the elders and senior military leaders such as Wen Jiabao, Li Ruihuan, and Zeng Qinghong. They attended as non-voting participants last year and arrived again this year; the teacups are set and the seats are reserved to show the entire Party that these people are still around and still managing affairs. Just ten minutes before CCTV reporters were allowed to carry their cameras into the venue, that very row of seats was occupied by stern-faced elders, until Xi Jinping read out the statement of resignation due to illness for the second time during the closing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in front of all members of the Central Committee, at which point those elders slowly stood up and exited through the side door.
So how did this resignation letter come about? Just on the afternoon of the second day of the meeting, a heavy stack of materials was slammed right in the center of the table. Atop it was a top-secret dossier urgently compiled by Shi Taifeng and Liu Jianguo, containing not only ironclad evidence of Ma Xingrui hoarding hundreds of billions in Xinjiang and Guangdong, but also a flow-of-funds list detailing the financial transactions between Wang Xiaohong's secret special police armed forces and overseas black money. Wen Jiabao pointed at the materials on the table, his tone as calm as a deep well, yet every word he spoke was chillingly incisive. Since the 20th National Congress, the military had fallen into chaos and the economy had stalled, leaving comrades within the Party panic-stricken. Some comrades wanted to turn the Party into a family dynasty and roast the entire Party over a fire. If they failed to deliver an explanation to the whole Party and the people of the entire country today, nobody would be walking out the front door of the Jingxi Hotel. Before his voice even faded, the temperature in the venue instantly dropped to freezing point. Down below, over two hundred members of the Central Committee sat with their heads down, staring fixedly at their leather shoes, not even daring to cough. Xi Jinping sat on the podium, his face turning from pale to ashen, the pencil in his hand nearly snapped in half. Xi wanted to slam the table and throw a tantrum, but he knew very well that Zhu Chuansheng at the August First Building controlled troop deployments and guarded the general dispatch telephone, Han Shengyan in the Xishan Command Center kept his hand on his holster without stepping away, and the heavy armored vehicles of the 38th Group Army in Baoding had long since been refueled. At this hair-trigger moment of a showdown, Zeng Qinghong, sitting in the middle, leisurely put down his teacup and pulled Xi Jinping into the adjoining back room. Once the door closed, the old fox laid his cards on the table. Things had reached this point; stubborn resistance was no longer viable. The military faction had blood in their eyes, and if the materials in Wen Jiabao's hands were read aloud on the spot, nobody's face would remain intact. Taking a step back would open up a vast horizon, so they should just proceed as negotiated during last year's Fourth Plenary Session: resign due to illness. Zeng Qinghong emphasized these four words heavily, building an extremely delicate tightrope bridge between Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping. To Wen Jiabao, Zeng Qinghong said that Xi had agreed to step down as General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Commission without open criticism within the Party, so as to avoid shaking the foundations of the system and to preserve face for the entire Party. To Xi Jinping, Zeng Qinghong said that as long as he voluntarily stepped down, the status and treatment of a fifth-generation leader would be preserved for him, bygones would be bygones, and the First Lady would not be pursued either; this was to ensure the safety of his entire family. Surrendering the posts of General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Commission was equivalent to having his claws pulled out, reducing him to the likes of Hua Guofeng back in the day. But what if he refused to sign? Wen Jiabao could immediately initiate a voting procedure on the spot, laying out those seven major sins one by one right on the table, and by then, whether he could walk out of the Jingxi Hotel safely would be anyone's guess.
Late in the night on October 28, the third day of the Fifth Plenary Session, when Xi Jinping walked into the venue once again, he looked as though he had aged ten years overnight. Amidst dead silence, he pulled out that thin sheet of printed paper, and with a hoarse, intermittent voice, read out that confession. Due to personal health reasons and the heavy burden making it difficult to shoulder the heavy workload of Party, government, and military affairs, he hereby applied to the Central Committee to resign from the positions of General Secretary of the Central Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. As he reached the end, his right hand holding the paper trembled uncontrollably. The members of the Central Committee in the audience sat like clay sculptures, none daring to applaud, none daring to whisper among themselves. An overbearing era was, at this very moment, abruptly cut off from its breath. The next day at the Great Hall of the People, he read it a second time in public, after which those elders and senior military leaders belonging to the decision-making and consultative coordination bodies finally left the venue.
On that night at the Jingxi Hotel, the man reading the script had a hoarse and halting voice. Whether he was truly sick or faking it is not our concern, but by late October, with the large temperature differences between morning and evening, the indoor heating turned on, and the air drying out, our own throats and breathing are indeed the first to feel uncomfortable. Speaking of lung care, Director Seo Hyo-seok from South Korea has a saying: once the lungs are well cared for, the maintenance of the entire body has a foundation. Pyunkang Hwan is designed along this concept, having been used in Korean medicine for over fifty years, accompanying more than 160,000 friends in conditioning their physical constitutions and performing daily lung maintenance. Many friends who feel their breathing is restricted upon entering winter have found, after persistent use, that their discomfort is eased, their breathing is smooth, and their days have become more comfortable. If you yourself, or the elderly in your family, would also like to care for your lungs before winter arrives, you can click the link pinned in the top comment and description box below the video to learn about Pyunkang Hwan, or you can directly call Pyunkang's hotline at 800-210-5501. Friends of our program also have a special token of appreciation: enter the coupon code JF at checkout, and for every bottle of Pyunkang Hwan purchased, you will receive one root of Xuanbao Black Ginseng. Pregnant women and those taking medication year-round should consult a doctor first. Now, let's get back to the main point. Since Xi Jinping himself admitted defeat and submitted his resignation before the plenary session closed, why is the name of the top leader still hanging in the communiqué, and why isn't Hu Chunhua's rise printed in black and white upon it?
Some friends think that Xi Jinping has staged a comeback. If you view Chinese Communist Party politics that way, you have completely misread the situation. Back in the day, Hua Guofeng was completely hollowed out of power at the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, yet Hua Guofeng's name still hung high on the communiqué until the Sixth Plenary Session over two years later, which formally let him go. This is the top smoke and mirror trick of the Chinese Communist Party's stability maintenance: doing the deed secretly in the shadows while putting on a full face in the open. Once it is announced in black and white that Xi Jinping has resigned to take responsibility and the Military Commission leadership has been reshuffled, 1.4 billion people will explode, the financial market will crash, and once Xi's cronies in various provinces panic and spin out of control, who will pick up the pieces? Therefore, before the Fifth Plenary Session closed, the Council of Elders and the military had long set up a secret transitional task force for power handover. Xi Jinping on stage is left as an empty shell responsible only for signing and stamping seals, while the real military, political, and personnel authorities had long been transferred to the behind-the-scenes task force. There is no need to rush to print Hu Chunhua on the headline of the communiqué; when he makes his public debut at the 21st National Congress next year, with the task force controlling the game from behind, moving troops, auditing accounts, and changing provincial party secretaries—did any of these get delayed? Thus, Xi Jinping's name still hangs on the communiqué, but the plaque of the Two Establishes above his head, along with the Chairman Responsibility System of the Military Commission, has been stripped down to not a single character left. We thoroughly explained these things in our previous two episodes and will not repeat them today. This is called stealing the beams and replacing the pillars while leaving the shell behind without the spirit.
True political shifts are never found in those thousands of official words in the communiqué, but are hidden within that unseen task force roster. So how will this play unfold step by step? Let's keep our eyes on four ballot-checking stations. First, the army-wide lecture tours: the Third Plenary Session the year before last and the Fourth Plenary Session last year both saw the Vice Chairmen of the Military Commission come out to meet the lecture delegations on the eleventh day after the sessions closed. Calculated by this, it should be in early November this year. When the time comes, let's see whether the person coming out to meet them is Zhang Shengmin alone, whether there are new faces next to him, or simply none at all. Second, the Air Force's grand show: around November 11th, the August 1st Aerobatic Team will fly over Huangyaguan. Who is standing on the reviewing stand, who is giving the speech, and will Xi Jinping's name be mentioned? Third, that tent in Thailand: once the tent is removed, it means someone has paid the price the army demanded; if the tent is not removed, it means this ledger has not yet been settled. Fourth, the year-end promotion of generals: whether Zhu Chuansheng and this batch of army generals get promoted depends on whether Hu Jintao is willing to give the army a separate accountability. Thank you, friends, for watching today's Jiang Feng Horizon. Once you understand this meeting that the Military Commission dared not hold, you understand how the game will be played in the year following the Fifth Plenary Session. Please like, subscribe, and turn on the little bell, and forward this episode to friends around you who are still puzzled by the communiqué. See you tomorrow at the same time.