Trouble for Cai Qi's Son Cai Erjin! Li Yuanchao's Son Arrested at Midnight? Xi Jinping Takes Away a Core Figure of the Li Peng Family, China's Eight Great Tycoons Simultaneously Raided and Harvested! The Era of Saving One's Own Life Has Arrived — Taxation of Overseas Rich Begins (Old Beijing Teahouse / Episode 1782 / 2026 / 10 / 23)

This episode mainly reports on the sudden downfall of Beijing's Executive Vice Mayor Xia Linmao and the inside story involving Cai Qi's son, Cai Erjin; it also explores the large-scale tax collection and asset seizure campaign launched by the CCP's Ministry of Finance and State Taxation Administration against the offshore trust assets and overseas income of wealthy individuals, naming several internet and corporate tycoons; finally, it focuses on the arrival of China's "life-preservation era" and the high incidence of cancer among young people.

Video link:

Full text:

Let's talk about a magical realist drama that took place right under the nose of the imperial capital, Beijing. Just recently, Beijing's Executive Vice Mayor Xia Linmao was suddenly announced to have fallen from grace. Once the news broke, jaws dropped everywhere; after all, before the official announcement, "rumors" had already been flying around overseas. As it turned out, the official notification confirmed that the "rumors" were actually "far-reaching prophecies." Pay close attention: this matter is not as simple as the two sentences in the official report. The Epoch Times obtained exclusive inside information that the downfall of Vice Mayor Xia is just an appetizer for another, larger political storm, with even bigger things to come. Behind this storm, the clues are pointing directly at a super heavyweight figure: CCP Politburo Standing Committee member Cai Qi, and his own son, Cai Erjin.

As it happens, just yesterday, October 22, 2026, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and the National Supervisory Commission released a one-sentence notification: Xia Linmao, member of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal Committee and Vice Mayor, is suspected of serious violations of discipline and law and is currently under investigation. The fewer the words, the bigger the matter. After all, independent commentator Cai Shenkun had already broken the news overseas on the 20th, stating that Xia Linmao, who was rumored to be promoted to Mayor of Beijing, had actually been taken away by the CCDI overnight on the night of the 19th. Most importantly, his home was thoroughly searched. Even more excitingly, according to exclusive leaks from The Epoch Times, Source A said that on the night of the 19th, the CCDI launched operations all over Beijing, maximizing their KPI, and Xia Linmao was by no means the only one taken away. Specifically, Xia Linmao was dragged out of his luxury mansion in Chaoyang District and stuffed into a CCDI black car. At the same time, at the Beijing Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a core member of the family of the former power tycoon Li Peng was invited away by case officers on the spot. Meanwhile, at the famous Hong Kong Jockey Club on Jinbao Street, Li Haijin, the precious son of former Vice President Li Yuanchao, also enjoyed the same "Shuanggui" (detention) package. With these masters and young masters gathered together, the amount of money involved and the charges could practically make a Hollywood crime thriller.

Here is the key point: Does Xia Linmao, the central figure in this case, have any major corruption cases against him? Of course he does. This involves a major procurement scandal at the high-tech giant Huawei. This case is intricately linked to the previously fallen Political Bureau member Ma Xingrui. However, this is not even the most fatal part; most fatally of all, right in the core profit chain of the case, the name of Cai Erjin, the son of

Furthermore, just a few months ago in June 2026, Wei Xiaodong, Chairman of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the CPPCC, was also brought down while in office. This Chairman Wei is a native of Zhangzhou, Fujian, and was a staunch subordinate of Cai Qi during his time governing Beijing. In less than half a year, two members of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal Committee from the Cai Qi era have been smashed one after another. Coupled with the fact that Cai Qi's own son, Cai Erjin, has been implicated in a major corruption case involving Huawei and Ma Xingrui, isn't the implication of this combination of blows obvious? The seemingly unbreakable alliance between Xi Jinping and Cai Qi seems to be undergoing a subtle chemical reaction. Under an extreme power structure, when a person appears too loyal, holds too many concurrent positions, their old subordinates form a power base in the capital region, and their son is adept at maneuvering in core approval departments, they are only one step away from "overshadowing the master." From the Li Peng family in the Jiang era to the Ling Jihua family in the Hu era, and now to the Cai Qi family, who are at the height of their power in the Xi Jinping era—one case can take down three generations. When the meat grinder starts, no one gets a get-out-of-jail-free card. So, can Cai Qi and his son Cai Erjin walk away unscathed from this storm? Let us wait and see. A quick emergency poll: do you think Xi Jinping's henchman Cai Qi will be out of a job at next year's 21st Party Congress? Options: 1. Yes, 2. No, 3. Anything is possible. Hurry up and type the number in the comments section.

By the way, the CCP has had the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security call on the "cattle and horses" (the common people) to pay social security taxes, demanding that everyone be screened and that everyone who should be covered is covered. Upon hearing the call from the Ministry, the wealthy of the Party-state calmly stated that they have already prepared to "run" as much as possible and escape as much as possible. With the buildings empty, they are bidding farewell to social security. Before the sound of their "goodbye" had even faded, the tax bureau followed up on the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's call, especially targeting the wealthy: Want to run? We already anticipated the crooked minds of you wealthy leeks. We will investigate everything that should be investigated, including the overseas assets and offshore trusts of these wealthy leeks, and we will retroactively audit them for twenty or thirty years—not a single cent will be missed, and the audits will basically start from around 2001, when China joined the WTO. Today, every wealthy person familiar to the public is within the Party's crosshairs; it will be an absolutely equal distribution of "imperial grace." Look at this overwhelming display of imperial favor—can you handle it?

In the past two days, our program has talked a lot about the grassroots paying social security taxes. Today, let's pause and talk about the latest progress in the CCP's harvesting of the "big leeks." On July 24, the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration issued an announcement requiring the wealthy to pay a 20% tax on income derived from overseas trusts. Furthermore, any historical tax arrears on these offshore trusts must be voluntarily declared and paid within 90 days, with a deadline of October 22; failure to do so will result in severe penalties. Over these three months, financial personnel specializing in family trusts have been working overtime collectively, desperately trying to figure out how to legally avoid taxes. However, while the wealthy have legal tax avoidance, the Party has its sickle, and the "good days" have only just begun. The wealthy who haven't "run" and once held great power are now collectively suffering from anxiety. After working busily for twenty or thirty years, it turns out they were just making wedding clothes for the Party. Of course, the vast majority of these tycoons, in their desperation, can only urgently assess risks while raising funds to pay the taxes. For example, some wealthy individuals have begun to accelerate the sale of stocks or seek overseas loans. The grassroots take out bank loans to pay social security, while the wealthy cut their losses in the stock market to pay taxes. Who is a representative figure? Shu Ping, co-founder of Haidilao, has just sold approximately $350 million worth of stock through a family trust to cover the tax bill. The wealthy know it like the back of their hand: whether you cut your losses early or late, you have to cut them eventually, and it's better to do it yourself than to wait for the Party's sickle.

Originally, by October 22, the tycoons should have had things mostly sorted out and the back taxes moved around. Unexpectedly, with only three days left in the countdown for offshore trust tax payments, the State Taxation Administration added six important "patches." On October 19, the State Taxation Administration released "Q&A on Personal Income Tax Policy for Offshore Trusts," clarifying six execution details in one breath: 1. Financing interest cannot be deducted from taxable income; 2. Overseas corporate income tax cannot be deducted from personal income tax; 3. Historical trust income must be bundled for tax payment, and management fees cannot be deducted; 4. Undistributed profits before being placed into the trust must also be calculated; 5. Income from equity incentives established by enterprises is still subject to tax; 6. If the unpaid personal income tax exceeds 100,000 yuan, it meets the standard for extending the retroactive collection period. I won't go into the specific technical details and impacts here, because we are neither professionals nor wealthy people, and we don't understand the troubles or joys of the rich. But we know one thing: when the nest is overturned, no egg remains intact; when the sickle is raised, no living leek remains.

Twitter blogger Finding made a more incisive comment: when all is said and done, in this system of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), there is fundamentally no concept of a "taxpayer," only those who are "taxed." Whether it is the trusts of the rich or the wages of the poor, how rules are set, when they are changed, and by how much are never matters discussed with ordinary people. The only difference is that some people are harvested sooner and others later; leeks are still leeks, and it is just a matter of time. Xi Jinping squatting inside the Chunchun Studio, smiling secretly while thinking: understand now, the consequence of not deeply grasping the spirit of my speeches is meeting with trouble sooner or later, and weren't you told long ago? Our Party practices whole-process democracy, which to put it bluntly means the whole process belongs to us—you are all nobodies, and we are all the masters. Since when do masters need to discuss anything everywhere when they want to do something?

Right after saying that, the deadline of October 22 for the CCP's overseas tax-chasing operation against the rich has passed, yet no accurate official news has leaked from within the Great Firewall, such as who paid how much in back taxes. It is estimated that such news will hardly come out in the future because, based on the Party's consistent covert operations, news of the Party smiling secretly will definitely not be released by officials, and onlookers can only resort to guessing. Bloomberg, a relatively authoritative overseas media outlet, likely wanted to fill this missing piece of information, so on October 20 it published a heavyweight article naming eight Chinese billionaires most likely to be targeted first by this "tax-chase order." Bloomberg reported that over the years, Chinese billionaires have basically followed the same routine to protect their family assets from being confiscated. What routine? Growing their businesses domestically, then listing overseas, and putting tens of billions of dollars of assets into offshore trusts that Chinese tax authorities cannot reach and that are protected by Western laws—a big, bold word: "safe." However, unexpectedly for the billionaires, this so-called safe firewall was easily cleaved in two with a single slash by the CCP, turning the bold "safe" into a bold "harvest."

So returning to the point, what kind of scale were the once-"safe" assets of these eight billionaires? Bloomberg revealed the answer. By comparing thousands of pages of listed company regulatory filing documents from U.S. and Hong Kong stock markets, the result is jaw-dropping: the total overseas trust assets of these eight individuals exceed 1400 billion dollars, or trillions of RMB. These eight gathered the overseas trust assets of the most glorious internet and physical manufacturing giants in China over the past twenty years: NetEase's Ding Lei at 37 billion dollars, Pinduoduo's Colin Huang at 29 billion, Xiaomi's Lei Jun at 20.7 billion, Hansoh Pharmaceutical's Zhong Huijuan at 15.8 billion, China Hongqiao's Zhang Bo family at 15.4 billion, Pop Mart's Wang Ning at 10.2 billion, as well as SITC International's Yang Shaopeng and Anta Sports' Ding Shizhong—all calculated in U.S. dollars. Bloomberg only pointed out these eight billionaires, but even larger super-rich individuals are waiting in line behind them, such as ByteDance's Zhang Yiming, Nongfu Spring's Zhong Shanshan, and Tencent's Ma Huateng. It is said that "common prosperity" is a brick, moved wherever it is needed; nowadays, with the long-term slump in the real estate market, local government finances hollowed out, and the CCP searching the world for money, the overseas vaults of billionaires naturally became the Party's next target for "common prosperity," fully verifying Old Xi's saying that the rivers and mountains are the tycoons, the tycoons are the rivers and mountains, and conquering the rivers and mountains means hitting the tycoons.

In addition, an international lawyer who used to provide advice on setting up offshore trusts for a large number of Chinese super-rich said in an interview with Bloomberg that all clients were initially shocked, wondering how the CCP knew about their overseas assets. But they quickly realized that the CCP could cross-reference past prospectus and acquisition announcements to accurately calculate how much money they made and how much tax they should pay, leaving billionaires with nowhere to run. Especially in an era of such advanced big data and AI, when these companies IPO in Hong Kong or list on NASDAQ, their prospectuses are open and transparent. With just AI tools, Chinese tax authorities can issue back-tax bills of billions or even tens of billions of RMB within minutes based on the shareholding ratios and historical dividends listed. In a word, the prospectus belongs to the Party, please review it, Party. Xi Jinping squatted again in the Chunchun Studio, smiling secretly and thinking: be content; without comparison, you wouldn't know how to write the word happiness. My common prosperity is still somewhat better than back during the public-private partnerships—at least it didn't force all of you to become paratroopers. Thunder and rain, dew and frost, are all imperial grace; now go back to making money and paying taxes for me.

On October 21, two hashtags simultaneously surged onto the Weibo trending list: "Now is the era of saving one's life" and "Why is thyroid cancer becoming more common?" Both are thorns in the side of Chairman Xi. In the new era of Xi Jinping, the common people have been forced into the primary stage of socialism, the "era of saving one's life." As the saying goes, "If you work too hard, you'll die." How can the General Secretary even point his finger now? Even his fingers have ended in a "tofu-dreg" project. Let's talk about these two hashtags. The first one, "Now is the era of saving one's life," is preceded by the phrase, "The era of working yourself to death has passed." This means the "era of working to death," where the cattle and horses (the masses) traded their health, stayed up late, and worked overtime in exchange for wealth, is over. The "era of saving one's life," which emphasizes physical and mental health and inner stability, has arrived with a roar. Emphasizing physical and mental health and inner stability really just means that if you don't pay attention to your health, your life will be gone. Everyone on Earth knows that after three years of chaotic pandemic management, the economy of the CCP's China is in a miserable state, blocked on all sides: slowing growth, a collapsing real estate market, halved housing prices, unemployment upon graduation, being "graduated" from big tech companies at 35, and intensified 996 workplace involution, etc. Ordinary people are completely helpless and can only be swept along by the tide. It's too painful to talk about. Many have realized that the returns for working themselves to death are continuously declining, while their young bodies are on the verge of collapse. Exhausted and drained, young and middle-aged people suddenly pass away at work, delivery riders stop breathing on the roadside, and various influencers suddenly exit the stage—these have become the most painful realizations of this era.

Look here, it's too miserable. If you can still be a human in the next life, never be reincarnated in this wasteland. As the health blogger "Almond Physician" said, in front of the crematorium furnaces, there are more and more people in their 80s and 90s. They were supposed to be the pillars of their families with elderly parents and young children, but because of long-term sleep deprivation, excessive stress, and neglect of health, they reached the end of their lives prematurely. They suddenly realized that if your life is gone, everything is gone. The blogger "1 Truth" also said that the era of working to death has passed, and now is the era of saving one's life. In the past, everyone competed for houses, cars, and money; now, they compete for who can sleep well and who can maintain a stable mindset. You don't need to compare yourself to anyone. If your whole family is fed and clothed, free from illness and disaster, and physically and mentally comfortable, living a plain and simple life, that is the greatest blessing. As long as the green hills remain, there will be wood to burn. So in the Party-state, if you can "have a good body," you are already a winner.

Because the topics of "high incidence of thyroid cancer and breast cancer" hit the trending list at the same time, this is proof. According to public data, in the mid-2000s (2003-2005), the top five cancers in the country were lung cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancer, and colorectal cancer, with digestive tract tumors occupying four spots. By 2024, the top five have become lung cancer, female breast cancer, thyroid cancer, colorectal cancer, and liver cancer, with thyroid cancer jumping from outside the list into the top three. Data shows that the incidence of thyroid cancer is highest among men and women aged 20-39, and it also ranks first among women aged 20-59. Research also shows that this incidence rate is on a clear upward trend, and they are all young people. Director Sun of the Thyroid and Breast Surgery Department at the First People's Hospital of Yunnan Province said that although the high-risk factors for thyroid cancer are mainly family genetics, radiation exposure, and metabolic abnormalities, well, BUT, those reasons that are not allowed to be discussed publicly also played a significant role. The reason is that although the "Great War against the Pandemic" ended in a "tofu-dreg" project, the results are quite numerous: high incidence of myocardial infarction, high incidence of cerebral infarction, and high incidence of cancer. Look at the "three highs"—the evil caused by the three doses of Sinovac. Netizens all say the same: COVID-19 played a significant role. Because everyone around them gets checked and finds nodules. The COVID-19 vaccine directly shut down the body's most important tumor suppressor protein. They had annual checkups and were always healthy, but after Dad got the shot, he got cancer. The oncologist asked if he had received the shot. My dad said yes, and the doctor said, "No wonder." Even Xi Jinping regrets it; all the parts are toxic. What's the point of the 150-year goal? Who directed the course and insisted on mandatory injections? Answer: "There is no silver here, 200 jin."