Xi Jinping must clear the Fifth Plenary hurdle before his US visit! Did Zeng Qinghong set the successor? Politburo suddenly locks in October 26, party-wide document placed directly on the table; three succession plans for Hu Chunhua, Han Zheng, Ding Xuexiang! 【Jiang Feng Vision 20260922 Episode 494】
This episode analyzes the political game in Zhongnanhai on the eve of the China‑US summit. With the date of the 20th Party Congress’s Fifth Plenary Session officially locked in on October 26, a decision on comprehensively strict Party governance entered the review process. Amid rumors of multiple succession plans involving Hu Chunhua, Han Zheng, Ding Xuexiang and others, a fierce power negotiation is underway between the veteran faction and the current top leadership.
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Friends, welcome to Jiang Feng Vision. In the past forty‑eight hours, what has been the most baffling incident in Beijing and overseas networks? In Washington, Trump has practically rolled out a red carpet onto the tarmac. Bloomberg has spent several days dissecting the state‑visit agenda, military honors, even the schedules of the two first ladies.
According to past practice, such a high‑level leader’s trip would have Beijing’s propaganda machine running at full throttle twenty‑four hours a day. This time, however, Zhongnanhai was as quiet as if it had fallen into an ice cave; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stayed silent, Xinhua pretended to be deaf, leaving the world hanging for three whole days. Just as the whole internet was guessing whether the trip had fallen through again or whether Beijing was facing another major incident, at 1:56 PM on September 21 Beijing suddenly, without warning, dropped a bombshell: the Politburo met.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Party Congress was set for October 26, and a fierce‑looking decision on comprehensively strict Party governance was formally submitted for review. Only sixty‑four minutes after the Politburo’s order was issued, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as if he’d just received the keys, wasted no time and hurriedly announced that the state president would visit the United States the day after tomorrow. Friends, did you catch this double act? The White House doors had been opened three days earlier.
Why does the host of Zhongnanhai wait until the Fifth Plenum’s table is set up at home and the whole‑Party seal is stamped before daring to buy an overseas ticket for the whole world? At that moment, a fiercely aggressive high‑level leak emerged from abroad. This time, the one forcing him to reveal his cards before the Fifth Plenum is not someone else but the behind‑the‑scenes operator who has been hidden in the power abyss of Zhongnanhai for years, Zeng Qinghong.
Is his Washington trip meant to revitalize his authority, or is he carrying a time‑limited exit permit signed by the veteran faction, heading for a final curtain call? Today, let’s unpack the power‑life‑or‑death note behind this Politburo meeting that no one dares to state openly.
From September 18 to 21, a bizarre time reversal unfolded on both sides of the China‑US relationship. In a signal‑shielded top‑floor room of JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters in Manhattan, New York, He Lifeng, together with Li Chenggang and dozens of trade and technology officials, spent dozens of hours in continuous talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Bentsen and Trade Representative Gleason.
They hammered out clause after clause, from critical rare‑earth delivery deadlines to U.S. soybean purchase quota terms; the U.S. side held one briefing after another. On the South Lawn of the White House, the positions for twenty‑one salute cannons were measured; Andrews Air Force Base even raised the security line on the tarmac where Trump would personally receive the aircraft. The United States marshaled all its resources to build a top‑tier international stage, focusing the world’s spotlight on a single point, waiting for the protagonist to appear.
That Beijing special plane was literally held on the runway for a full seventy‑two hours. Anyone familiar with how the system operates knows a basic fact: a head of state’s foreign visit is not a casual trip with a suitcase. Flight plans, security advance teams, aircraft maintenance, coordination among ministries—all require more than half a month of meticulous preparation; without it, the trip simply cannot happen. In other words, the officials in Zhongnanhai who were to go to the United States had long been aware of this in Beijing’s technical departments.
So why did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs clutch the visit statement like a hot‑potato, refusing to read it into the microphone even as foreign reporters overturned the press hall’s roof? The answer lies in the political bureau meeting room in Zhongnanhai that was suddenly closed on the morning of September 21. Let’s look at when that meeting was convened.
Since the 18th Party Congress, the monthly Politburo meeting has, except for a few rare emergencies, followed a regular pattern: it is held at the end of the month, usually the last Friday, or the 28th, 29th, even the 30th, because the macro reports from the NDRC and the National Bureau of Statistics only come out at month‑end, allowing all departmental briefings to be complete. More crucially, according to the itinerary released by the White House, he flew over on the 23rd and was already back on the return‑flight plane on the 25th.
In other words, by September 26 he was already back in Beijing. From the 26th to the 30th—a full four days—he had ample time, according to routine, to hold that end‑of‑month meeting. Why couldn’t he wait those four days? He was in a hurry. The political heavyweights lurking in the shadows of Beijing could not wait any longer. Within the CCP’s brutal meat‑grinder there is an unspoken rule that no top leader can depart the country during a critical reshuffle of party power unless internal factions have been briefed and procedural rules have been locked down.
What did the Politburo do on the morning of the 21st? It formally set the date for the Fifth Plenum of the Central Committee to October 26‑29. Even more decisive, it finalized the draft decision on “Persistently Advancing Comprehensive Strict Governance of the Party on Several Major Issues” as the sole core political document to be submitted to the Fifth Plenum. Compare this with the press release of July 30.
Back then the official line was that the Party was studying several major issues of strict governance—a wind‑talking, topic‑discussion. By September 21, less than two months later, that document had already been circulated for feedback across the Party, discussed and amended by the Politburo, and locked in as a final draft. What does that mean? It means that the size, shape, even the name of the dossier on the trial bench of the Fifth Plenum had been welded shut on the morning of the 21st.
The October 26 date became an irreversible political countdown, hanging precisely before every Central Committee member’s eyes. From the day he returned, only thirty‑one days remained for him. Whose position would be reshuffled, how to fill military vacancies, who would be held accountable under the Party banner—all were forced into this one‑month dead‑end. That Politburo meeting was not about sending the head of state off to the United States.
On the contrary, it was about signing the internal life‑or‑death contract, tightening the cage of the Fifth Plenum, ensuring that even if he flew to the United States the situation could not be reversed. Only then was the foreign ministry’s microphone finally powered on, Washington’s door opened—thanks to Trump’s treatment; Beijing’s door opened—thanks to the compromise over the Fifth Plenum that produced an exit permit.
But there is an even more interesting question: Was this “no‑Washington” card actually the top leader’s trump card? If the trip were cancelled, the political price he would pay would likely be greater than anyone’s. Let’s flip the table and ask a basic question: In the turbulent autumn of 2026, at this critical juncture, who cared more about his arrival—Trump, or the person at the top of the Party who urgently needed this U.S. trip? The answer may surprise many. The one truly eager to board that special plane and cross the Atlantic for the state dinner was, in fact, he himself. Looking back over the past half‑year, how oppressive has the political atmosphere in Beijing become?
The military’s massive purge has been rolling wave after wave, from the Rocket Force equipment development department to successive vacancies at the top of the Central Military Commission. Local finances are in shambles, the real‑estate crash’s deep pits remain unfilled, and tens of trillions of local government debt and corporate triangular debt have left local authorities gasping for breath. Just days ago at the Tsinghua Wudaokou Forum, even the usually ultra‑cautious top‑tier system economists Lin Yifu, Yu Yongding, Yao Yang, and Li Xunlei could not resist a rare collective outburst.
Yu Yongding even directly quoted Mao Zedong's old words, shouting that ten thousand years is too long, we must seize the day, making it clear that the central government's accounts are spotless while local governments are a mess, forcing the center to issue bonds for swaps. When the engine of the economy is rattling, the uneasy atmosphere inside the bureaucratic system can no longer be suppressed by a few People's Daily editorials. But more lethal than the economy and the military is the political rumor that spread across the entire network all summer. During that period, overseas social platforms were buzzing with claims that he had a sudden heart attack and was taken to a "30‑0‑1" hospital, even drafting an obituary.
The rumor swept the city like a storm. In a highly centralized system with information kept in a black box, the scariest part of such rumors is not that ordinary people use it as gossip over tea, but that it reaches the bureaucratic ranks within the system. Those provincial party secretaries, ministry heads, commanders of major war zones, and political commissars who hold great power start to feel uneasy. Officials have a keen sense of smell; they whisper privately: Should we take sides with the top? Is the leader's health really okay? Is his grip on power still firm?
Do his words still count? If he has indeed become a lame duck, will our rigid alignment now make us the victims of the next elite in a few months? Once such doubts spread within the bureaucratic group, issuing orders from Zhongnanhai will no longer be a joke but will push the whole Party into a collective "lying‑flat, waiting for change" spectator mode. In this extremely passive, authority‑drained situation, he desperately needs a strong medicine to stabilize the foundation.
But he cannot have Xinhua issue a press release declaring that his health is robust and his power intact; doing so would make the whole world laugh. Washington, however, provides the urgently needed political booster. Look at what the U.S. side prepared for him: as soon as the special aircraft landed, Trump himself greeted him on the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base.
The White House South Lawn fired twenty‑one salute guns, the Rose Garden reviewed the three‑service honor guard, and the East Hall state dinner was filled with top American tech and finance leaders. The next day, the two heads of state would drink tea together and tour the national archives. What he really lacks is not a White House dinner, but a high‑definition photo showing that he is still a great‑power leader. What exactly is happening behind the deep walls of Beijing's palace? How many locks have the elders placed on him behind the scenes? Ordinary citizens cannot see, and grassroots officials cannot grasp. Yet every night at seven o'clock, the news footage is crystal clear to hundreds of high‑ranking officials who hold real power across China.
When the television screen is filled with Trump's smiling face shaking his hand, and the U.S. military band playing the national anthem, this visual impact can suppress all private discussions within the Party in a short time. Who says the top leader is no longer viable? He still sits at the center of global power representing the country. Because this state visit is so crucial to his personal political image and his very survival, Party rivals have seized this fatal soft spot. Imagine: the U.S. side had already rolled out the red carpet on the evening of the 18th for the whole world, and if Beijing suddenly announced at the last moment that he would not go.
What would be the world's first reaction? No one would think the United States is at fault; everyone would draw a single conclusion: Beijing has staged a coup, or the leader can no longer perform his duties. Such a political tsunami is a cost he cannot bear. The more he needs this U.S. trip, the heavier the weight of that outbound ticket becomes in the internal bargaining of the Fifth Plenum. So the real political game is not that "Old Xi" threatens the elders by canceling the visit; on the contrary, the elder faction treats the visit as the hardest bargaining chip, placing it on the negotiation table.
You can want to go to the United States for the scenery, you can want the honor of being met by Trump himself, you can want Xinhua to produce a picture of an unshaken empire—however you frame it, you can have the decorum. The Fifth Plenum agenda must be fixed before departure; that's what we call the U.S. rolling out the red carpet while Beijing's courtyard collects the toll. So what toll did the closed‑door Politburo meeting on the morning of September 21 collect from him? Which three fatal political steel cables did the elders lock onto the exit permit at the gate of the Fifth Plenum? Let's keep dissecting.
Thus, at the closed‑door Politburo meeting on the morning of September 21, what exactly was nailed down with steel nails? Xinhua's Politburo communiqués always appear steady, but placing the July 30 and September 21 drafts side by side shows that the changes in phrasing carry vastly different weight. If you compare the late‑July and late‑September communiqués word by word under a magnifying glass, you will find that on that September morning, Beijing's top leadership actually locked three extremely heavy locks.
The first lock that was sealed was the schedule for the plenary session, clearly written in the official press release. The 20th Party's Fifth Plenary Session was set for October 26 to 29 in Beijing, and this is not a simple notice of dates. If you recall the eight‑month protracted drama of the 20th Party's Third Plenary Session, you will understand how heavy those four days are. In the CCP’s political black box, if the central plenary does not set an exact start date, it means the factional battles beneath the surface have not been resolved, and the top ruler always holds a card of indefinite postponement. By dragging it out, they can use the procedural vacuum to reshuffle, purge, and find excuses, substituting delay for change. At the Politburo meeting on July 30, the official statement was still vague: the meeting would be held in October in Beijing. By September 21, that vague October was nailed down with a bang to October 26. What does this mean? The official who returned from the United States to Beijing on the 25th now has exactly thirty‑one days until the congress that will decide the fate of the whole Party opens. Once the hourglass is turned, the ticking clock will not stop for anyone. Leaders of all thirty‑one provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions now have a bright countdown sign in their minds. In thirty‑one days, how will the army fill vacancies? How will the cases of fallen officials be closed? How will the future personnel slate be arranged? All the matters that could previously be shuffled in the dark are forced by this date into a dead‑end that must be settled. This is a procedural deadline that cannot be pushed back even twenty‑four hours.
The second lock is even more critical than the date; it locks the nature of the core document of the Fifth Plenary Session. The Politburo meeting explicitly announced that a weighty document would be submitted to the Fifth Plenary for deliberation, titled “Decision on Persistently Advancing the Comprehensive Strict Governance of the Party on Several Major Issues.” Friends, this is an extreme signal that breaks more than thirty years of CCP political convention. What truly matters is not why this Fifth Plenary does not follow the usual five‑year plan template, but that whenever the CCP’s Fifth Plenary puts party governance, organization and personnel on the same table, it is never a minor move. In 1955, the Seventh Plenary’s Gao Rao case closed the political loop and established central and local supervisory committees, while also co‑opting Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping into the Politburo. In 1980, the Eleventh Plenary passed party political life guidelines and reshuffled the Standing Committee to restore the Secretariat; in 1985, the Twelfth Plenary simply used the pretext of a generational change in central leadership to adjust the Politburo and Secretariat. In other words, governance documents and senior officials have always been able to move together at a Fifth Plenary. Moreover, note the procedural wording in the press release. This decision draft has already been completed, consulted within a certain scope inside and outside the Party, reported at the Politburo meeting, revised, and then directly submitted to the Fifth Plenary for deliberation. What does this indicate? On July 30, the matter was still called a study, a project to persistently advance strict party governance on major issues. By September 21, it had become a meticulously worded, fully processed legal decision awaiting a vote by more than two hundred central committee members. In the CCP’s lexicon, “governing the Party” is never used for a book club; it is followed by organizational adjustments, disciplinary actions, and accountability investigations. Before the Fifth Plenary, various forces could still argue behind the scenes: why are you moving this line? Why are you removing that person? Once the central plenary votes this decision into law, it becomes the supreme addition that the whole Party must implement. From then on, any purge of Xi’s old guard, any settlement of military corruption, any accountability for local economic collapse can all be placed under the political hat of implementing the strict‑governance decision. When political struggle dons the Party’s legal bulletproof vest, its destructive power is catastrophic.
The third lock is not the written words but the profound final sentence of the press release. The meeting also studied other matters. In the CCP’s propaganda routine, this is a standard wordless code. The more a matter involves top‑level power reshuffling and shocking personnel changes, the less likely it appears in the headline of the news release. The public sees the grand narrative of strict party governance, while the real battles behind closed doors concern how to fill the many vacant general‑rank positions in the Central Military Commission, how to adjust several key State Council posts, and how the core succession plan will be arranged. The time has been nailed down, the rope of party governance has been tightened, and the gate to secret personnel negotiations has been opened. Most intriguingly, these three major locks just as they sealed all the various Beijing narratives about the successor, erupted at an unusually high frequency, overwhelming everything like a landslide.
Hu Chunhua is one set, Han Zheng and Ding Xuexiang are another set, and there is yet another set of local cadres’ relay positioning. Why do these versions all hit the public sphere on the very day of the Fifth Plenum of the 20th Central Committee, when the Party’s direction is being set? And why does the veteran political‑medicine figure Zeng Qinghong, who has been retired in the deep palace of Zhongnanhai for many years, play an extremely critical behind‑the‑scenes role in these rumors? Let’s keep dissecting, focusing on the heart‑stopping power chessboard of Zhongnanhai, following the daily brain‑teasing developments; the most draining thing is our own vitality.
The date of the Fifth Plenum and Yi Chenggang’s certain death, the various versions of the successor circulating in Beijing’s political arena and overseas public opinion, have boiled over like a pot with its lid lifted. In the Chinese Communist Party’s airtight black‑box system, there is an eternal rule: the louder the slogans of unity on the surface, the more frenzied the whirlpools beneath; and the more chaotic and contradictory the political versions circulating outside, the more they indicate that internal pressure has hit an explosive level. Let’s first lay out the several versions that have been circulating privately in the overseas public sphere and Beijing’s official circles over the past few days for comparison.
The first version that attracted intense public attention was Hu Chunhua’s striking move. After the 20th Party Congress, this former Politburo member, once seen as a hot successor candidate, was practically kicked into the cold palace of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). For more than three years, Hu Chunhua appeared in Xinhua footage mainly as a background figure at the edge of the large conference hall. Yet in mid‑September of this year, his political visibility suddenly erupted. On September 11, at the Great Hall of the People, he sat beside Wang Huning, accompanying a meeting with foreign guests. From the 13th to the 16th, he led a CPPCC inspection delegation across the Shandong Peninsula. On September 17, at a marine cooperation development forum in Qingdao attended by officials from more than sixty countries, the Chinese side’s representative delivering the keynote speech was none other than Hu Chunhua. In the CCP’s strict hierarchical system, a vice‑chairman of the CPPCC taking the podium at an international forum and speaking in a diplomatic tone that “China is willing to work together with all parties,” representing the nation’s highest sovereignty, was unimaginable in the past decade. Consequently, the public sphere immediately echoed rumors of a comeback of the “tuan” faction, with strong voices claiming Hu Chunhua would overturn the outcome at the Fifth Plenum.
However, while Hu Chunhua’s line was heating up, another completely different but more politically seasoned version quietly spread within Beijing’s senior circles. This rumor thrust a figure with deep historical weight, Zeng Qinghong, into the spotlight. Deep‑source information from Beijing claimed that Zeng Qinghong this time personally represented the party‑elder faction, acting as a key coordinator in mediating the power crisis. The alleged framework bore the hallmark of old‑school bureaucratic compromise. The elder faction did not intend to adopt radical, all‑or‑nothing tactics, but sought a path that could keep the “red ship” from capsizing while allowing the dignified exit of the Zhongnanhai figure. In this version, the current Vice President Han Zheng was pushed to the forefront. Han Zheng, an old‑school technocrat spanning both the Jiang faction and the establishment system, is seen by all party sides as the least controversial and most smooth‑handed. More importantly, constitutionally he is the legitimate successor to the state’s top post, while the long‑term successor target is the only 1960s‑born member of the Politburo Standing Committee, Ding Xuexiang. The rumor even depicted a transition path where 1950s‑born senior cadres gradually withdraw from the historical stage, allowing the 1960s‑born cohort to fully assume power during the 21st Party Congress.
Beyond these two top‑level design versions, a third, more concrete local‑cadre positioning scenario also circulated within the system’s organizational lines. If you pay attention to the personnel tweaks in various provinces in September, you’ll notice a series of rapid, linked moves. On September 18, a single‑step promotion made someone the Deputy Secretary of the Anhui Provincial Party Committee. On the same day, Zhang Wenbing was transferred from Executive Vice Governor of Hubei to a member of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee; in Liaoning, Huo Bugang simultaneously took on the role of Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee; the Party Secretary of Dalian and the Mayor of Shenyang were adjusted within a few days. In Xinjiang, Zhang Yingchun became Deputy Secretary of the Autonomous Region’s Party Committee. These capable officials, who hold significant economic and personnel power in their provinces, made dense moves right before the Fifth Plenum, which outsiders interpret as clearing seats for several Politburo members’ comings and goings, preparing to take over.
The multiple versions clash, yet they highlight a common point more clearly. The specific names differ, but everyone pushes the succession and personnel showdown to the October Fifth Plenum. If you view these details from a political‑intelligence analysis perspective, the apparent battles conceal a striking consistency. First, regardless of which version or which side’s political demands the leaks represent, there is an implicit premise: the current power structure is unsustainable, and the succession issue has become irrevocably on the table. Second, all rumors—whether they promote Hu Chunhua, suppress Han Zheng and Ding Xuexiang, or map local cadres’ moves to Beijing—pin the decisive moment to the Fifth Plenum of the 20th Central Committee scheduled for October 26. Third, the past political high‑pressure environment of a single‑person supremacy, where no one dared to mention succession, has been completely torn apart within the system.
Especially the reappearance of the name Zeng Qinghong is worth our deep reflection. In the contemporary political history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Zeng Qinghong is called the political operator who understands this machine best. From forcing Qiao Shi out at the 15th Party Congress, to arranging for Jiang Zemin to remain Chairman of the Central Military Commission at the 16th Party Congress, to pushing the old Xi onto the succession position amid multi‑party bargaining at the 17th Party Congress, and even including the decades‑long "seven up, eight down" unwritten rule within the Party, all of it was backed by his power‑play calculations. If the Party elders truly reach a new consensus to clean up the current mess while avoiding regime collapse, Zeng Qinghong is indeed one of the very few who possess enough seniority, skill, and cross‑factional connections to act as a go‑between. The core characteristic of these old‑school political figures is the art of balancing political transactions. The leader wants to protect personal and family safety, to leave with dignity and face; the system wants to correct deviations, to reclaim absolute autocratic power, and to re‑establish collective leadership and succession order. Specifically, was the person finally seated in that position the rumored Ding Xuexiang, and how much transitional function did Han Zheng actually assume? We still don’t know today. But the truly bet‑worthy signal is that the most powerful trump card in Zhongnanhai over the past decade was to completely hide the word "successor," leaving all potential rivals in the dark and unwilling to act rashly. Now, with several succession plans bubbling inside and outside the black box and various factions openly or semi‑openly scrambling for the runway, that card has become completely obsolete.
If the elder faction has indeed reached some compromise with the person at the top of the tower, what method will they use to close the net at the upcoming Fifth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee? Will they really, like in a gangster movie, slam the table in the Great Hall of the People and depose the emperor on the spot? That is impossible. In the CCP’s brutal history, there is an even older, more covert, yet more lethal method. Forty‑six years ago, facing the equally powerful Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping and the elders employed a tactic called "first dismantle the palace, then deal with the emperor." What the Fifth Plenum truly warrants watching may not be whether a chair suddenly disappears from the podium on October 26. When the CCP machine handles the transfer of supreme power, the harshest play is often not an immediate ouster, but first dismantling the palace before handling the emperor. Let’s rewind the lens to forty‑six years ago, February 23‑29, 1980, when Beijing also held a central plenary session that changed the political trajectory—the Fifth Plenum of the 11th Central Committee. At that time, Hua Guofeng still occupied the positions of Party Chairman and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. During that week’s meetings, did Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, and other elders rush onto the podium to force Hua Guofeng to hand over the seal? Absolutely not. But what did the elders do at that Fifth Plenum? First, they restored the Central Secretariat and selected Hu Yaobang as General Secretary, making the Secretariat once again a key hub for daily Party affairs. Hua Guofeng’s top‑level power structure began to be sliced apart. Second, they added Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang to the Politburo Standing Committee, instantly diluting the highest decision‑making body’s authority. Third, they approved the resignations of Wang Dongxing, Ji Dengkui, Wu De, and Chen Xilian from leadership posts; several heavyweight figures exited simultaneously, directly reshaping the central top‑level power structure, and markedly reducing the number of people around Hua Guofeng who could support his original power configuration. Fourth, they passed a resolution fully rehabilitating Liu Shaoqi, politically, morally, and historically sentencing the previous line to death.
When that 11th Central Committee Fifth Plenum concluded, Hua Guofeng still bore the dazzling titles of Party Chairman and Military Commission Chairman, but when he left the Jingxi Hotel, everyone who could mobilize troops or issue orders on his behalf had already been replaced. He became a precisely hollowed‑out political shell, and it wasn’t until more than a year later at the 11th Central Committee Sixth Plenum that the overall situation was finally settled, and the elders calmly allowed him to formally hand over his duties, completing the final handover. By the 12th Central Committee Fifth Plenum in 1985, the official line omitted any cover‑up, directly announcing a new‑old turnover of central leadership, adding six Politburo members and five Secretariat secretaries in one stroke, silently completing a thorough blood‑letting of the supreme power network within the system.
These two Fifth Plenary Sessions of the Central Committee teach us that, according to the political logic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the most seasoned way to strip a person of power has never been to tear off his dragon robe on the spot, but to saw off the four pillars behind him one by one. Looking back now at the chessboard before the 20th Central Committee’s Fifth Plenary Session, the historical cadence is strikingly similar! The person in Zhongnanhai who now cares most about his own face, his decade‑long leader aura, and the political dignity that must never be publicly denied in party bulletins, treats his image as more important than anything else. Since he values face more than heaven, the veteran faction and various forces can fully replicate the wisdom of those years. The top leader’s title can temporarily remain on his head, the red carpet for state visits can still be walked by him, the headline on the news broadcast can still carry his large‑character directives, but the substantive hub surrounding the supreme power must be completely taken over at this plenary. Look at the subtle trends now unfolding at the local level. Why, on the eve of the Fifth Plenary, did key provinces such as Liaoning, Anhui, and Fujian see an extremely dense turnover of provincial deputy secretaries and executive vice‑governors? It is like before a major battle, where the knowledgeable watch not the commander’s fancy uniform but who occupies the shelters on each high ground. This means that when the vote is taken on October 26 at the Fifth Plenary, the network of local real power represented by the more than two hundred central committee members in the audience will no longer be the private property of a single faction. First replace the secretariat, first shift organizational authority, first decide the successor, first reclaim the keys that truly move personnel, investigate cases, and issue orders. The person at the top, even if still nominally in place, will find his directives increasingly unable to leave the office door.
The boss wants face; the elders, if they truly discuss succession, want substance. Trump gave him the great‑power leader’s face in Washington, and if the Zeng Qinghong revelations are genuine, what is being discussed on Beijing’s table may be succession matters and the real power arrangement after the Fifth Plenary. So, friends, is the boss’s trip to the United States a coronation ceremony that re‑asserts absolute authority to the whole party, or is it a limited 72‑hour glamour pass granted by the Senate after it has taken away his Fifth Plenary trump card? We won’t have to wait long; the boss will hand in his report in October.