Xi Jinping's Major Decision! Restoring the Position of Party Chairman, 14 Prestigious Universities Jointly Pressuring Him, Is the Fifth Plenary Session Changing Everything? The Central Party School Has Rebelled, Proposing Cuts to Cadre Pensions?

This video discusses the political situation on the eve of the Fifth Plenary Session of the CCP Central Committee. It focuses on the analysis of an open letter circulating online, allegedly signed by 14 universities, opposing the leader's lifelong tenure and its background; the sharp decline in attendance of Central Committee members and high-ranking military officers at the Fifth Plenary Session, reflecting purges and power consolidation; the speculation circulating overseas that Xi Jinping might restore the position of Party Chairman; the infighting within the system triggered by the Central Party School's discussion on cutting pensions for military, industrial, and high-ranking cadres; and the upgrade of the central bank's digital RMB infrastructure and its potential restrictions on individual financial freedom. It also explores the substantive impact of these power shifts on cross-strait relations.

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Has China really awakened? Many people watching this video might be doing so in the afternoon or after the results of the Fifth Plenary Session have been announced, because this video was filmed yesterday. At that time, the outside world estimated that Xi Jinping might restore the status of Party Chairman, a position held by Mao Zedong, within this half-year—a position that currently does not exist. Additionally, Xi Jinping convened a four-day closed-door Fifth Plenary Session, right? It is expected that all results will be announced before 7 PM tonight. But where is the awakening I just mentioned? A very strange list appeared on the Chinese internet. On the opening day of the Fifth Plenary Session, an open letter was published jointly by these 14 Chinese universities, opposing the leader's indefinite term. They actually brought up Deng Xiaoping's past advocacy against the lifelong tenure system for cadres to question the current Xi Jinping. This is equivalent to using the CCP's own ancestral teachings to oppose the current leader of the Communist Party. This is exactly what the CCP often accuses others of—what they call "forgetting one's ancestors"—yet they are the ones who have forgotten their own.

But this matter is very suspicious. Where is the suspicious part? This political manifesto, claimed to be signed by 14 universities, actually has a very strange website behind it. The incident occurred on October 26th. The signatory universities included Peking University, Renmin University of China, Tongji University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and even Xiamen Kai Nan University, among others, totaling 14, which put forward three demands. First, abolish the lifelong tenure system, with a maximum of two terms. Second, what is it? Promote democratic constitutional amendments. Third, guarantee the right of the Chinese people to discuss state affairs. In fact, aren't these three points very similar to other democratic countries? If this demand really came from students within China, the political sensitivity would be far beyond ordinary campus protests. And where is the smartest part of this letter? It does not simply curse Xi Jinping; instead, it extensively cites historical manifestos from Sun Yat-sen, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping. But even so, it is still useless, because any ancestral teachings or manifestos unfavorable to the authorities—and the ancients were also very wise, having long ago told you a phrase that can solve all problems—what is it called? "Times change, and circumstances change."

However, tracing the IP address of this letter revealed that the website hosting the petition is registered in South Korea, while its mailing address falls in Singapore. The administrator's email indeed uses Tencent's domain, but the telephone number and WeChat account left behind involve the Chinese mainland's country code 86. Here comes the funny part: many overseas Little Pinks and regime loyalists fiercely rant that this is even a letter concocted by Taiwanese people themselves to confuse our public discourse. How could our youths be strong making China strong, how could these students who have worn red scarves since childhood and read Xi Jinping Thought textbooks dare to publicly oppose lifelong tenure until the age of 150 for Xi Jinping? But where is the problem? The official Chinese authorities did not even report on it on a large scale; instead, they quietly deleted the petition when it was reposted on social media platforms inside the Great Firewall, shifting their focus to a French football star instead. Regardless, this reflects the emperor not being anxious while the Little Pinks are panicked to death. Of course, the website being registered overseas does not mean the letter is necessarily fake; it is also possible that overseas students who were once graduates of these universities, or students inside mainland China, easily managed to use overseas proxy platforms and switch their IPs if they truly wanted to publish such politically sensitive speech. Otherwise, who among unarmed students within the wall would dare to make a public, collective statement? Your whole family would just be waiting to disappear and be taken away for tea. Moreover, with the Fifth Plenary Session approaching, Beijing is currently under heavy guard. Inside the Chinese mainland, trying to mimic Taiwan's freedom of speech carries far too high a price. Even during June Fourth, when there were high-ranking elites like Zhao Ziyang and others backing it, did it not ultimately fail? Under today's technological conditions, for ordinary people to try and emulate past peasant uprisings is an event approaching zero and is practically impossible.

That is also why in various territories ruled during the Soviet era, we can find that ever since the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Polish student movement of 1956, and the Prague Spring being suppressed, all the way to competing with the US until bankruptcy, failing in war and getting bogged down in Afghanistan, and Gorbachev's intra-party struggles leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself, throughout those nearly 20-odd years, whether Czechs or Soviets, didn't they all passively cooperate? If you want to engage in formalism, I'll play along with you; I'll recite those soulless sentences and lie flat soullessly, which is very simple. You can see this just by looking at the example of Iran today: overthrowing a dictator requires meeting a great many conditions. Merely having a popular uprising is not enough; it includes the party leadership splitting, conservatives willing to overthrow the cabinet, reformers willing to cooperate, and the revolutionary faction joining forces, with the most important part being the middle class also joining, underground gangs and underworld forces operating, and finally the masses coming out so they have the confidence to stand on the streets all in one go, perhaps even with foreign intervention involved. Therefore, we cannot conclude that Chinese people are truly cowardly or spineless, because the cost of their resistance is truly far higher than what we Taiwanese ourselves faced during the White Terror era.

However, where do I find the more interesting political question? Even if it turns out to be fake in the end, Xi Jinping himself won't believe it's fake; he would rather believe it is true, running the Party and the country with strict governance. Moreover, before the Fifth Plenary Session was convened, all universities and colleges were also subjected to a thorough and strict inspection. Otherwise, do you think I had an easy time after being put on a wanted list? With so many overseas transnational suppressions, let alone Chinese people whose physical bodies are trapped inside the Great Firewall, of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that some high-ranking CCP officials are using overseas names to wage intra-Party struggles, creating the impression to the outside world that Xi Jinping is purging people and making him look even more dictatorial, or making Xi Jinping guess which specific individual might have released such a message through overseas platforms. Then Xi Jinping might purge this person, achieving the political struggle effect that these people originally wanted. After all, palace struggles have thousands of years of culture. Taiwan has been separated for a long time; although Taiwan also has some bad habits of intra-Party struggles, the level of bloodshed really cannot compare with China's. But did something truly major happen at this Fifth Plenary Session? The Asia Society Policy Institute released a report on October 19, stating that in 2022, the 20th National Congress of the CCP elected 376 members and alternate members of the Central Committee, but now only about 291 people may be able to attend this Party's Fifth Plenary Session, a decrease of about 85 people. The projected attendance rate is only 77%, which is even lower than last year's Fourth Plenary Session's 83%. If this is really the case, Xi Jinping has already broken the historical record of the CCP, having an attendance rate even lower than that during the era of Mao Zedong's Great Purge. There are only two versions for not attending such an occasion: the first is that you are demented, ill, physically and mentally unable to take care of yourself, and in the intensive care unit; the second is that you are currently being purged, investigated, and sentenced. Nearly a quarter of the original lineup may not be able to show up. Of course, specifically, we still have to wait for the results announced tonight to know if the gap is within the plus or minus 5% announced by this American research. But the most outrageous part is the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The Brookings Institution in the US released this analysis on October 23: out of the 44 military members of the Central Committee, after Xi Jinping's Chongzhen-style and Stalin-style purges, currently only 17 people still retain their nominal Central Military Commission (CMC) titles. But among these 17 people, those who still publicly have activities and footage are, first, Defense Minister Dong Jun, and the current CMC Vice Chairman who is also the sole CMC member in charge of military discipline, inspections, and reporting others, Zhang Shengmin. So you see, out of 44 high-ranking military officials, only 17 still hold their positions, and recently only two have made public appearances and can be seen normally.

If we put this situation back into the middle and late Ming Dynasty—killing Mao Wenlong, killing Xiong Tingbi, killing Yuan Chonghuan, killing, killing, killing all the generals who could win battles, killing them all because I don't trust you, because you might form small cliques, because you might be corrupt—killing until in the end there were no generals left to use, Sun Chuanting was also ultimately driven to his death by Chongzhen's urging for battle, right? Back then, a saying circulated: “Once Chuanting dies, the Ming Dynasty falls.” Now someone else dies, who knows, but it's worth pondering carefully. Xi Jinping has such a huge capacity to purge so many high-ranking generals, which of course can also be interpreted as him having extremely tight control over the military. But conversely, if many of these high-ranking generals were originally handpicked and promoted by Xi Jinping himself, why are so many people still getting into trouble today? If you were a PLA general, your former boss suddenly got purged, the person competing with you got promoted and might also have been subjected to an investigation, at this moment Xi Jinping asks you to submit a military strategic deployment plan against Taiwan or any other country, what would you do? If you think this plan carries a very high risk, would you dare to report it directly to your Chairman, even if the US and Japan truly don't mobilize their troops, and instead like the US back in World War I, they transport supplies to the UK? Then would you, the CCP, actually dare to learn from Germany back then and indiscriminately shoot down ships and vessels in the blockade zone? Or would you write the report all prettily, emphasizing that our military is fully prepared and capable of winning battles, leaving other problems to be dealt with after they actually happen? Because in official circles, sometimes making wrong suggestions is dangerous, but making correct suggestions that make leaders unhappy might be even more dangerous. We can see this from the cases of Yuan Chonghuan all the way to Sun Chuanting, right? I won't go into detail here; dictators on this mainland piece of land have precisely this kind of personality, and this is what Taiwan truly needs to study to judge whether the other side could pose more substantial threats to us. The purge of the CCP military of course does not mean the PLA has completely lost its combat effectiveness, but if officers start worrying that loyalty is more important than professional judgment, then when facing major military crises in the future, just how many people will dare to speak the truth?

However, there is another detail about this Fifth Plenary Session that I think is more interesting than the attendance rate. When a vacancy occurs among the Central Committee members, it must be filled by alternate members of the Central Committee according to the original voting order—or rather, the ranking order. Logically, with so many positions suddenly opening up at the top in recent years, the alternate members below should be very happy, right? Suppose you were a military cadre promoted by Zhang Youxia, and now Zhang Youxia is gone; if it just so happens to be your turn to be promoted according to this order, many people ask: would they really be happy? Don't dismiss it, because some former CCP officials I know who defected to the United States have told me that they would indeed be happy. They always feel they won't be purged, they always feel they will be very careful, and they always feel they are the one in ten thousand. Anyway, it doesn't matter if they eventually get purged; they have already embezzled so much money and transferred it overseas. But let me offer a word of advice: times have changed. Don't think that just because you can replace Zhang Youxia or occupy a certain official position, you are anything more than a Nian Gengyao being used at this stage. If you don't understand what I'm saying, it means you Little Pinks don't even have the most basic common sense. In the end, you will still fall into Xi Jinping's meat grinder. And what's even worse? If, according to the original system, it should have been your turn, but the Central Committee skipped your name and let someone ranked behind you get promoted first, you're finished. You must have been targeted by the Central Committee; you probably have some issues and are about to be purged, it just hasn't been officially announced yet. What effect will this have? Everyone will quickly distance themselves from you. During last year's Fourth Plenary Session, there was already a situation where the person who should have been promoted to fill a vacancy among the military alternate members was skipped. Therefore, I believe the list officially announced by this Fifth Plenary Session on October 29, as well as its results, are truly worth studying.

At this time, the Financial Times has put forward a very sensitive political inference: Xi Jinping may restore the Party Chairman system of the Mao Zedong era. This is not the current system of the President of the People's Republic of China, but the Chairman of the CCP Central Committee that Mao Zedong held back then. In 1982, in order to transition from a system of centralized totalitarian leadership, the CCP authorities abolished the position of Party Chairman and changed it to the current General Secretary system. As a result, after more than 40 years, what does Xi Jinping hold now? General Secretary, as well as President and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, right? Why don't you just wear 100 gold medals when you go out in the future, 100 crosses, is that enough? If you collect one more Chairman, four Chairmen, four directions north, south, east, and west are all yourself. However, I think the truly interesting thing about this matter is not whether Xi Jinping wants to be as great as Mao Zedong, but why he might need this position. Currently, it is only a scholar's inference; he has not announced whether he will restore such a proposal. If there is such an arrangement, it might be announced at the Two Sessions or even the meetings around the 21st National Congress. But if you were Xi Jinping, you are now 73 years old, 74 next year, the same age as Stalin when he died. If you want to continue to hold supreme power, but your health is terrible, and you think the situation of the new China that you have purged will collapse, an era of decentralization, but you also want younger people of your own to handle the daily party and state affairs, is it possible for you to promote yourself to that Party Chairman, and let others serve as the General Secretary of the state? In other words, assuming Li Qiang or Ding Xuexiang took over the position of President or something similar, and you, Xi Jinping, became the CCP Central Committee Chairman of the Mao era—I believe you would definitely concurrently hold the position of Chairman of the Central Military Commission—on the surface, the CCP seems to have completed the generational handover. The President is not me anymore, Li Qiang or someone like Ding Xuexiang is happily sitting in the President's office, preparing to sign a document, and then your little secretary runs over and says, 'Mr. President, I'm sorry, but Supreme Leader Xi has not agreed to this, so this document of yours is...' Then Li Qiang and those people would say, 'That's strange, am I not already the President? I am the head of state.' The secretary replies, 'Yes, but Chairman Xi is the leader of the Party, the leader of the country, you have to listen to the Party and follow the Party, right?' And have you noticed that this system might instead create new problems for Xi Jinping? For example, if the people below think that Li Qiang or others are the future successors, they will gradually start to align with him. Then, will Xi Jinping worry that his position as the Supreme Leader is unstable, and that the actual political influence has begun to shift? Conversely, if Xi Jinping is unwilling to give up any power, then what is the point of others becoming General Secretary? Therefore, restoring the Party Chairman does not necessarily have only benefits; it may also create an opportunity for the separation of two power centers. At the very least, this rumor has caused the outside world to begin discussing how exactly Xi Jinping will arrange the future power structure in 2027.

While all of us are discussing the term limits and positions of this top leader, ordinary Chinese people are facing a much more practical, daily-life issue: pensions. Recently, many people on the internet have been circulating the original text of a discussion on pensions from the CCP Central Committee Party School, with many universities spreading this original text. Is the CCP really going to adjust or even cut the pension benefits of military, industrial, educational personnel, and senior cadres, and then use this money to give back to the grassroots peasant population? After all, farmers' pensions are only one or two hundred RMB. If these people's interests are really touched, the political impact would be far beyond a mere fiscal reform. But unfortunately, all these articles and discussion posts have been taken offline. You need to know that the CCP has 11 categories of this pension group, but the military, industrial, and educational personnel are grouped together, and their share alone consumes 36%. One of the reasons the Ming dynasty fell in the first place was that they supported an endless number of imperial princes and their descendants, and these princes, their next generations, and the generations after that all remained little princes and little lords. Moreover, on October 22, the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection just published an article specifically discussing the problem of retired cadres seriously and irregularly accumulating wealth. In plain terms, it means that although these officials have retired, they might use their previously formed network of connections to influence others to do things for them. So now, looking at it from another angle, suppose you are Xi Jinping and you want to fill the pension deficit, achieve fairness as you see it, and also hope to restrict certain retired cadres—would you dare to touch these people's interests? Abolish high-ranking cadre hospital wards first before talking to me. If you do not reform, ordinary people might wonder why their own monthly pensions are only a few hundred RMB, while some people inside the system can enjoy better guarantees. And this article has indeed been spread around and only deleted inside China's Great Firewall, so many Chinese citizens already know about this matter, right? Then starting November 1, social security contributions will be made mandatory again, with retroactive inspections and fines of 1 to 3 times, and it was said that big data would be used to find your officials who were promoted by Xi Jinping. But if we look at the deletion of that article from the Central Party School discussing civil servant pension reform, we can see that certain people inside the CCP are still intentionally using this public opinion to pressure Xi Jinping, trying to provoke public discussion: wasn't reform promised, why did you, Xi Jinping, delete it? This stirs up public grievance and anger, guiding people to see whether Xi Jinping dares to take ruthless action, whether he dares to broadly touch these people's pie. You must know that this pie is the life-saving money that underpins some middle-to-lower-level Zhao family members and minor Zhao family members. If Xi Jinping even dares to take ruthless action against this, will they, like the gentry-officials and ministers in the late Ming dynasty, ultimately force Xi Jinping to utter the words: "I am not the ruler of a fallen state; all you ministers are ministers of a fallen state"? Suppose a new CCP leader appears in the future and tells these retired officials, "OK, fine, after I take office and succeed, I will maintain your original pension benefits so everyone can spend their old age in peace," while on the other hand, if Xi Jinping really demands such strict rectification, strengthens supervision, and cuts your military, industrial, and educational pensions, will these retired officials tend to support someone else taking over, or let you—of course, this is a political deduction based on interests, and it does not mean that there are currently any factions actually using pensions to oppose Xi Jinping, but this is the reality of interests.

And just a few days before this Fifth Plenary Session, the People's Bank of China also announced a financial technology that excited the Little Pinks: on October 21, China's digital RMB infrastructure was upgraded, releasing the framework for a new central bank digital RMB system and smart integration services. Okay, what does that mean in plain terms? Simply put, it means that for certain ways of using digital RMB payments, conditions can be pre-set, and the money will only automatically arrive in the account once those conditions are met. Suppose the government issues certain consumption subsidies or allowances, or even specifies that your salary can only be used to buy certain goods, spent at specific designated merchants, or even has a mandatory expiration date. Suppose you are a local official today, and you want to ensure these subsidies are used to stimulate consumption because fiscal revenue is really terrible, right? Then this technology is very convenient. But from the perspective of the people, a very cruel question arises: suppose today the government or your employer gives you this salary, but stipulates that you can only use it to buy things at specific designated stores, while you actually want to use this money to enjoy yourself, to go lying-flat, to top up mobile games, to pay your mortgage—even though construction has already stalled—or to send livestream gifts, anyway, can you freely use this money? But if more of these conditional digital RMB are needed in the future, who makes these rules, who changes these rules, can they be monitored, and if these rules are too outrageous and override the law, can your party correct its mistakes? The most absurd part of the entire Fifth Plenary Session is that current Chinese digital RMB banking technology already allows certain specific subsidies to use these conditions, and even mandates when they must be spent, yet China amended its constitution in 2018 to specifically remove the limit that the state presidency could not serve more than two consecutive terms. Don't you find this ironic? Ordinary people might receive certain salaries or subsidies in the future that can only be used before an expiration date, yet the supreme leader's power has no clear term limits, maximum number of terms, or expiration dates. When you go out to spend this money in the future, you have to remember when it expires, but nobody knows when Xi Jinping will finally expire. With less than a year left until the 21st National Congress in 2027, outsiders are even discussing whether he is preparing to reinstate Mao Zedong's system of Party Chairman. So next, we will wait for the officially announced results of the Fifth Plenary Session, and we can see from these name lists and personnel arrangements who is leaving the core of power and who has the opportunity to climb upward. And these changes are not just some boring palace intrigue or gossip to Taiwan; for a regime with massive military power that constantly intimidates Taiwan, if the military leadership undergoes continuous personnel changes, will the purges bring in hawks or doves? And with the lack of transparent arrangements for the succession of the supreme leader's power, will future military decision-making become more rigorous, or will it lack internal checks and balances, leaving no way to correct mistakes and thereby leading to a miscalculated attack on Taiwan? That's all for today's video. If you like it, remember to subscribe to me; if you don't like it, make sure to block me. I am Ba Jiong, see you next time, bye.