Xi Jinping's stepping down is only the first step? Wen Jiabao aims to restart "political system reform"! Fujian replaces the person wearing the chief official hat, 13 provincial chief secretaries take new posts, the real big battle of the Fifth Plenum has just begun! 【Jiang Feng Vision 20260915 Issue 488】

The video analyzes the political signals behind Beijing’s recent intensive adjustments of provincial-level personnel (such as Fujian Organization Department Minister Xu Qingsen and the appointment of several provincial secretaries-general) as the US‑China leaders’ meeting and the CCP’s Fifth Plenum approach, and explores the overseas rumor that former Premier Wen Jiabao is pushing political system reform and its profound impact on the CCP senior leadership.

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Friends, welcome to Jiang Feng Vision. The Trump‑Xi meeting now suddenly has a question mark. According to a source familiar with US‑China relations cited by the Joint Society, Beijing has already sent a message to Washington: if the United States approves a new arms sale to Taiwan before the scheduled US‑China leaders’ meeting, China may cancel the meeting. There are only about ten days left until the expected Trump‑Xi meeting, and after that comes the Fifth Plenum in October – one event is the leader’s external appearance, maintaining the image of the top leadership; the other may decide how the next round of internal seat‑allocation in Beijing will be arranged. The two time points almost collide. But today’s real interest is not whether the meeting will happen; it is another issue emerging from within Beijing: if the person at the top really steps down, where will China go next? Looking at these two issues together shows a stark contrast: on one hand, the US‑China diplomatic machinery is still bargaining over the Trump‑Xi meeting, with the leader nominally still the one who would board a plane, walk the red carpet, and shake hands with Trump; on the other hand, personnel changes are already happening in batches before the Fifth Plenum, with the Fujian organization suddenly swapping its head, and provincial “big managers” being intensively adjusted. Meanwhile, a heavier rumor has surfaced abroad: Wen Jiabao is pushing to restart political system reform.

If that rumor is true, it would be a bigger shift than a monarch’s abdication, because replacing the person in Zhongnanhai is just changing a face, but if the whole set of practices he left over the past decade is also being altered, it would move the direction of China for the next ten to twenty years. Many Chinese people today cannot afford such luxury; they may not dare to imagine waking up tomorrow to find the CCP gone. What people truly hope for is: stop the chaos, stop the internet from being further blocked, stop companies from calling themselves “our people” today and then treating us like fat pigs tomorrow, stop the top‑level position from being held for as long as one wishes, and let ordinary people catch a breath. That is why the six characters “political system reform” resurfacing today strike a chord with many Chinese. However, to be clear, no CCP Central Committee document has confirmed that Wen Jiabao intends to restart reforms; overseas Chinese commentators are still relying on leaks and political judgment. I am not going to announce that China is about to change based on a single rumor. Instead, we will do something more interesting: we will test this story against the personnel changes publicly announced over the past twelve days. If the claim were just a foreign self‑media invention, it would be easy to debunk. But if the claim appeared twelve days ago, and twelve days later Fujian suddenly swapped its organization head, and a batch of provincial senior secretaries handling party documents and directives also changed, then we have to ask: is the Fifth Plenum really only about swapping the chair in Zhongnanhai, or is it also moving the system and practices left behind?

Let’s start with the sudden change of the “wushamao” (official hat) in Fujian, without jumping to the huge term political system reform. On September 14, a striking personnel change occurred in Fujian’s political scene: Xu Qingsen was appointed Organization Department Minister of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee. The official procedure was fully described: the CCP Central Committee approved his entry into the Fujian Provincial Party Committee Standing Committee, the Central Organization Department consented, and then the Fujian Provincial Party Committee decided his appointment as Organization Department Minister. This was not a local closed‑door reshuffle; it was a personnel arrangement that traveled from Beijing all the way to Fujian’s organization office.

Xu Qingsen, born in 1971, has an interesting résumé. It is not notable for the rank he held, but for the fact that for more than twenty years he was almost never a local official. Early on he taught at the Law School of Renmin University of China, then spent a long period in the Ministry of Education, serving in the Department of Social Sciences and the Department of Higher Education, and in 2021 became Director of the Social Sciences Department of the Ministry of Education. In short, he previously managed universities and social science education policy – a typical central‑bureaucracy cultural‑education official, with no direct ties to Fujian’s local political‑legal or economic circles. The real turning point came in 2024, when he also took on the role of Director of the Ministry of Education’s Personnel Department. This step is crucial: previously he mainly dealt with policy; from this point he began handling people. The Personnel Department manages cadres in ministries and subordinate systems, involving cadre assessment, allocation, and appointment. By 2025, he was promoted to Deputy Minister and Party Committee Member of the Ministry of Education. Thus, Xu Qingsen’s trajectory over the past two years is very clear: from a policy role to a personnel role, then to a ministerial‑level position, and finally a sudden move from Beijing to head the provincial organization department in Fujian. This cannot be seen as a routine transfer.

What does a Provincial Organization Minister do? The Provincial Party Secretary runs the province’s day‑to‑day operations; the Organization Minister largely decides who will be qualified to replace the Secretary tomorrow, who gets onto the cadre assessment list, who can move from department‑level to higher ranks, which municipal leadership teams need adjustment, who should be transferred or retired. The organization system is a very important gateway. In CCP politics, the truly valuable asset is not just guns and money, but also the “wushamao” – the ability to influence cadre entry points, thereby shaping the next round of political landscape. This time the landing point is Fujian, which is not an ordinary province for the Zhongnanhai figure. From 1985 to 2022, that figure spent nearly seventeen years in Fujian, serving as Vice Mayor of Xiamen, Party Secretary of Ningde Prefecture, Party Secretary of Fuzhou, and Deputy Party Secretary and Governor of Fujian Province. The most important segment of his political career was completed there, and the so‑called “Minjiang New Army” and many personnel networks extended from that Fujian tenure.

Therefore, the sudden change of the organization head in Fujian right before the Fifth Plenum is already more noteworthy than in a typical province, especially since the incoming official is not a locally promoted cadre but a direct “airdrop” from a central ministry. Currently, the Fujian Provincial Party Secretary is Zhou Zuyi; the top leader has not changed, but the Standing Committee member responsible for province‑wide cadre assessment and organization work has. This pairing itself warrants observation. The top‑level position remains unchanged, while the gatekeeper for future entry into the leadership team has been swapped, leading some to interpret it as Fujian’s “old stronghold” being emptied. That interpretation sounds provocative, but we cannot treat analysis as fact.

Xu Qingsen’s airdrop to Fujian is a public personnel change. Who does he represent? Whether he is tasked with cleaning out a particular faction remains unproven, and the transfer of central‑bureaucracy cadres to local posts is not unprecedented. Given his experience as Director of the Personnel Department, moving from Deputy Minister to a provincial organization minister can be explained by normal cadre exchange and cross‑system cultivation.

If Xu Qingsen were the only person moving across China recently, we could only circle his name on a notebook, not draw a bold red line. However, the issue lies in the fact that Fujian is not an isolated case. At the same time the organization head’s “wushamao” changed, another batch of provincial “big managers” responsible for the Party Committee General Office’s confidential documents, policy transmission, and supervision were also being intensively replaced in many regions. One province’s normal rotation is understandable, but if, within the same time window, the officials handling personnel, documents, and the provincial party core’s operations all start moving, we cannot focus solely on a single “wushamao”.

If the Provincial Organization Minister oversees the “hat”, then there is another position within the Provincial Standing Committee that usually has low media visibility but becomes significant during power transitions. This position

It’s not a light matter at all, that is the provincial party committee secretary-general. On September 13, United Morning Post specifically compiled a round of personnel changes for provincial party committee secretary-generals. From last year to now, thirteen provincial party committee secretary-generals have taken office, and it is especially noteworthy that in less than two months, five people have succeeded as provincial chief secretaries. Currently, places like Chongqing, Hebei, Guangdong, Hainan, Guizhou, Hubei and other regions still have vacancies for this position, or are awaiting further clarification. In other words, this round of adjustments has not yet been fully concluded. Among this batch, several resumes are quite interesting: the newly appointed Shaanxi provincial party committee secretary-general Li Jun previously worked in the financial system for more than thirty years; Henan’s Li Tao has a background in state-owned energy and chemical enterprises; Jiangsu’s Chen Zhongwei has long worked in the coal sector; Hunan’s Wang Junshou comes from financial regulation; Ningxia’s Chu Wei is a typical power‑system cadre, having served as chief engineer of a power plant, general manager and chairman of a power generation group. Last year’s newly appointed Hubei provincial party committee secretary-general Peng Yong and Yunnan provincial party committee secretary-general Wang Zhengying also have large state‑owned power enterprise backgrounds. Counting the thirteen people who took office over the past year, at least three have clear experience in the power sector, so the report offered a very normal explanation: international energy security risks are rising, the Middle East situation and the Strait of Hormuz global supply chain are unstable, and the CCP senior leadership is promoting people who understand power, energy, and large state‑owned enterprise operations into local leadership teams, possibly to prepare cadres for the next round of energy security and industrial governance. This explanation makes sense; we cannot immediately shout “coup” at every personnel change. However, what truly deserves attention is not these people’s professional backgrounds, but which chair they finally sit in. The provincial party committee secretary-general is not the energy minister, nor the NDRC director; he heads the provincial office, overseeing the daily operation, comprehensive coordination, confidential documents, supervision, inspection and smooth transmission of directives of the provincial organs. To put it bluntly, the organization minister decides who wears which hat, while the provincial party committee secretary-general handles the provincial “key ring”: how central documents are transmitted down, how local situations are reported up, whom the provincial party secretary meets today and where he goes tomorrow, which matters need to be supervised, which documents are placed on the top leader’s desk first—these matters all revolve around the provincial office. The scholars interviewed in the report even used a vivid phrase to summarize the relationship between the provincial party secretary and the secretary-general: “when one rises, the other rises; when one falls, the other falls,” because this position is extremely close to the top leader. Look at today’s Politburo members Li Qiang, Ding Xuexiang, Li Xi, Liu Guozhong—all of whom have experience as provincial party committee secretary‑generals. This position does not necessarily send people directly into the Politburo, but it is a very typical central training post. What you learn there is not how to manage a single industry, but how to view the whole provincial chessboard, how to receive information for the top leader, allocate attention, and push orders to implementation. So the question arises: if this year’s changes were simply due to a lack of energy expertise, the most reasonable arrangement would be to put them in charge of energy‑industrial state‑owned enterprises, which would be unremarkable. Yet some of these individuals end up in the provincial central apparatus, which at least warrants another question: specialization is one reason, but is there another layer of consideration in personnel layout, especially when this is viewed together with the earlier reshuffle in Fujian? The flavor changes. Fujian just replaced the organization minister who handles cadre entry, and at the same time a batch of senior officials who manage the provincial office’s confidential directives are also being swapped. This does not mean the two are necessarily commanded by the same hand, nor should a close timing automatically declare that the entire party apparatus has been re‑wired. However, at this critical juncture before the Fifth Plenum, such concentrated adjustments of central posts are themselves worth watching. There is a practical observation method in CCP officialdom: it is not unusual for a cadre to be promoted within his original province and system; what truly matters is when he suddenly crosses provinces and systems, and who sends him at that critical node. We can call such a person a “ferryman,” but the term is only useful for finding clues, not for slapping faction labels. A cross‑province move may be work‑related, two cases may be coincidental; only when a group’s key promotions repeatedly intersect across provinces and superiors does it merit deeper investigation. So far we have not proven anything about “political system reform”; we have only observed a noteworthy picture: on one side, officials who manage the “hat” of governance are being changed, on the other side, officials who run the provincial central machinery are being swapped, and this process is not yet finished. The next question is: if this is merely a normal personnel rotation, why does the term “political system reform” suddenly surface abroad during this window, after a decade‑long silence? Interestingly, this phrase did not emerge only after Fujian’s reshuffle; twelve days earlier it had already appeared.

Is the statement that Wen Jiabao will restart political system reform something that abroad only pieced together after seeing these personnel changes? No. Twelve days before Fujian’s reshuffle, before Xu Qingsen’s parachute appointment, a major narrative had already emerged abroad: Hu Chunhua’s reluctance to accept the “old accounts of unity” proposal was because that version aimed to clean up the political line of the past decade, which is a prerequisite for the next political system reform. In other words, at that time people were already talking not about whether the top leader would stay or go, but whether the rules would change after the personnel shift. That claim lacked independent evidence then and cannot be taken as fact now, but its timing is worth remembering because the recent round of Fujian’s provincial secretary‑general personnel changes had not yet fully surfaced. Thus, the term “political reform” was not coined only after the September 14 Fujian changes; twelve days later, abroad another similar narrative appeared, suggesting that Wen Jiabao hopes to push the post‑Fifth Plenum agenda beyond merely handling the fate of the top leader and toward political system reform. Some senior party elders and vested interests within the party place great weight on the principle that people can be swapped but the system cannot be altered.

We must clarify that two channels telling similar stories do not equal multiple confirmations; they may stem from the same source, influence each other, or simply be independent analysts drawing similar conclusions from the same political signals. Therefore, the real point is not how many people abroad are talking, but why the story lands on Wen Jiabao. The answer does not require secret intel, because he himself left it in writing fourteen years ago. In the 2010 Two Sessions, Wen Jiabao publicly said that reform includes not only economic system reform but also political system reform, and that the success of political reform is linked to modernization. At that time he repeatedly emphasized not just government efficiency, but rights such as election, informed participation, expression, and supervision—how to constrain public power. Those words sound harmless today, but coming from a Chinese premier’s speech, they touch a fundamental issue: whether economic power can be fully delegated. In 2011 he pushed the point further: without political system reform, economic reform cannot reach its end, and achieved gains could be lost. Many listeners then thought it was just a polished line at a press conference; the economy was still growing, foreign capital was still investing in private firms, and young people felt the next year would be better than the current one, so few worried about “gains lost and regained.” The statement gained real weight at the final premier press conference in 2012, when he directly addressed party and state leadership system reform and warned that if reform stalls, economic gains could be lost, social problems unresolved, and even tragedies like the Cultural Revolution could recur. This was not a later script; it was spoken publicly in front of domestic and foreign journalists at the Great Hall of the People.

Even more interesting, that press conference was not held in a calm context. About a month earlier, Wang Lijun fled to the U.S. consulate, and Chongqing’s “sing red, beat black” political model suddenly exploded. At the press conference, Wen Jiabao unusually named Chongqing, demanding the local leadership reflect on the Wang Lijun incident and learn lessons. The next day, Bo Xilai was removed as Chongqing party secretary. So when you place this timing back, Wen’s warning that Cultural Revolution‑type tragedies could recur was not a casual historical remark; he was confronting a concrete political example of personalist governance and power overriding procedure. Thus, his notion of political system reform already carried the implication that without a systemic cage on top power, China could backtrack. Fourteen years later, looking back, this is the real potency of Wen’s political reform message—not because he suddenly became a savior, but because the path he feared has indeed been followed.

Now look at today: back then few believed that “gains lost and regained” could happen; now many have paid their own tuition. Rules for terms can change, power can be re‑centralized in one person, the internet can become more censored, enterprises can be labeled “our people” one day and then hit by sudden policy shifts the next. Local officials act not first on market or livelihood, but by guessing the higher‑level tone. Politics is no longer outside the dinner table; it will directly enter your company, your savings, your...

Whether a child can find a job, or even step out to see the world outside every day. So today the rumor that Wen Jiabao wants political reform easily hits Chinese emotions, not because everyone suddenly fell in love with a former premier, nor because the Hu‑Wen era had no corruption, no stability maintenance, no suppression. Chinese people are not that forgetful; whether it was the Jiang era or the Hu‑Wen era, people still complained and were dissatisfied at the time. It is only after more than a decade of turmoil that, looking back, what people miss may not be a particular leader but a time when life seemed to move forward, when they could still do something, when children still felt the future was ahead. Back then many criticized Wen Jiabao as an over‑talker, saying he said a lot and did little. That criticism was not unfounded, and precisely because of that, the current claim that he wants to pick up the unfinished business from those years evokes a complex feeling—not worship, but a compromise. People may not believe China will suddenly become a modern democracy tomorrow, but if the lifetime monopoly on power can be blocked, collective leadership and term limits restored, the internet loosened a bit, private enterprises given some space, and society pulled back from being responsible to a single person, that would already look like a crack for many who have been tossed around for over a decade. And precisely because of that, the real question today is no longer how true the outside‑the‑wall news is, but a more interesting one: if Wen Jiabao really sits back at the table, will he be satisfied just by replacing the person in Zhongnanhai? If the answer is simply swapping in a more normal, more listenable person, then the drama would end with Hu Chunhua’s succession. But if he truly wants to tackle the things he publicly spoke about back then—how to prevent an over‑centralized power system from letting one person roll back decades of reform—then the situation changes completely. At that point, the first to fall out with him may not be the top leader himself; the real trouble could come from those who also want the emperor to step down but do not want the red regime to loosen at all.

If the previous line holds, the difficulty is not so much removing the Zhongnanhai figure as deciding what rules come next. Many focus on CCP high‑level power struggles and simplify the issue: overthrow the boss, and China will naturally move toward liberalization. In reality, opposing one person and opposing the power structure they left behind are two different things. The former can unite factions, the latter threatens each faction’s own interests. If we combine the various narratives circulating outside the Great Firewall, an interesting division of roles emerges: Hu Jintao looks more like an acceptable arbitrator, stabilizing the tables among the military elders and various camps; if Wen Jiabao truly re‑enters, he appears as the one who pushes the problem further into the future. One of Hu Jintao’s most important political legacies is not to disrupt collective leadership and term transitions. For him, the priority may be to re‑stabilize the situation, keep the army under control, and prevent the highest authority from being concentrated in a single person who could overturn the whole table. If Wen Jiabao still clings to the unfinished agenda of his own era, his problem becomes messier. You can replace a boss today, but if the dragon throne remains and whoever sits on it can reclaim all power, ten years later another “emperor” may rise. That is the dividing line between changing the person and changing the game. Because of this, once the issue shifts from whether the top leader steps down to whether the system itself changes, former allies can instantly become opponents. Those senior party elders and red‑family vested‑interest groups who are dissatisfied with the top figure may actually want a personnel change because power has become too concentrated over the past decade, old rules have been shattered, and the previous practice of rotating leadership and leaving exit routes has been destroyed. For them, the ideal outcome might be to install a more normal, rule‑abiding person who knows how to divide the cake, thereby restoring the internal party balance. But if someone argues that merely swapping the boss is insufficient and that the chair itself must be limited—so the top leader cannot stay in power indefinitely, and the party’s will cannot override law, localities, and markets—then the stakes change. At that point, it’s not just the boss’s interests at stake, but the entire red‑power hierarchy’s safety deposit box. That is why another narrative now circulating outside the wall points to conservative forces braking political reform, which is not hard to understand from a political‑interest perspective. As for who is meeting whom, which faction sent whom where, those details lack sufficient public evidence at the moment. However, one logical point is worth seizing: removing the boss can be a temporary reason for everyone to sit at the same table, but once the boss is about to exit, the China that people truly want may not be the same China. This makes the Fifth Plenum even more interesting, because then the real contest may no longer be about who joins the Politburo, who joins the Central Military Commission, or who gets which chair, but about where the car will be steered in the next decade—whether the steering wheel is handed back to collective leadership, returning to the relatively looser, pragmatic mode of the Hu‑Wen era, or whether only the driver is changed while the car itself remains untouched. Both paths are called the post‑boss era on the surface, yet the outcomes could be completely different. Some may say it’s too early to discuss this while the boss is still officially on stage, the Xi‑Hu meeting is still talking about the Fifth Plenum, and no official announcement has been made. In fact, the CCP has experienced similar situations before. After the 11th Plenary Session of the 3rd Central Committee in 1978, the line shifted clearly; Deng Xiaoping became the actual political center, and reform and opening began, while Hua Guofeng still held the positions of Party Chairman and Central Military Commission Chairman. The subsequent rhythm became more interesting: in February 1980, the 11th Plenary Session of the 5th Central Committee restored the Secretariat, bringing Hu Yaobang and others into the core decision‑making circle; Liu Shaoqi was formally rehabilitated at that session; six months later Hua Guofeng ceased to be Premier, succeeded by Zhao Ziyang; a year later, at the 11th Plenary Session of the 6th Central Committee in 1981, he resigned as Party Chairman and CMC Chairman. You see the sequence: the line changes first, then personnel reshuffles, dismantling the old team layer by layer until the top position is finally handed over. Of course, we are not saying today’s drama will replay the script from over forty years ago—history does not repeat verbatim—but it at least proves that within the CCP system, as long as a person has not formally stepped down, the line cannot move first. That inference does not hold. Personnel changes and line shifts can move forward together, so we do not have to wait for Xinhua to suddenly publish a headline announcing the emperor’s abdication to know the situation has changed. Closed‑door politics often works the opposite way: the formal announcement is the last card; the first moves are in personnel procedures, cadre appointments, and political language—who is suddenly placed in a new position, who begins to exit key posts, which long‑dormant terms reappear in bulletins, which previously untouchable topics become discussable again. These signals sometimes reveal direction earlier than a single appointment decree. Now the phrase “political system reform” has resurfaced. If it turns out to be just a gust of wind from outside the wall, then it will pass without impact. But if after the Fifth Plenum the official language truly begins to re‑introduce collective leadership, institutionalized power checks, and reforms that have been suppressed for many years, then we will have to ask again: this time are they merely changing the driver, or is someone really reaching for the steering wheel and the machinery beneath it? As for where the first strike will land—whether it will be term limits, the internet, private enterprises, the judiciary, or local authority—we will not answer today. Once the dismantling begins, the order in which term limits, internet freedom, private sector space, judicial independence, and local power are tackled will determine which conservative faction is forced into a corner, each with its own political cost. That is the real drama worth following later.