34 CCP Officials Punished, 97 Central Committee Members Vanished! Attendance Rate Plummets to 74% in Two Years, Military Commission Wiped Out Leaving Only a Lone Commander, Military-Industrial Technocrats Purged! The Same Phrase 'Eliminating Hidden Dangers' Used to Purge Political Rivals Ten Years Ago Is Now Used Against Loyalists! Power and Fear Locked in Phase Give Rise to Caretaker Totalitarianism, the Successor Paradox Seals the Dead End!
This episode provides a detailed analysis of the startling political signals released in the communique of the Fifth Plenary Session of the CCP. The plenary session announced the disciplinary action against 34 individuals and the disappearance of 97 Central Committee members, a phenomenon of human evaporation. The top leadership of the Central Military Commission was completely wiped out, leaving only Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin, and the military-industrial technocrat group was uprooted. By analyzing the cliff-like drop in attendance rates and the caretaker totalitarianism generated by the phase-locking of power and fear, this episode explores the inevitability of bureaucratic defensive paralysis and the successor paradox pushing the regime toward a dead end.
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Guan Wu refuses fragmented cognition. Today, the communique from the CCP's Fifth Plenary Session was released. In this communique, 34 people were disciplined, 33 were expelled from the Party, and on top of that, two days before the meeting, eight provincial-level leaders were replaced in one go. I can only say that this fucking idiot Xi Jinping is now at a point where he has no other options. The attendance at this Fifth Plenary Session also broke records; even the expectation of a relatively low 77% attendance rate was shattered. There are 376 of those creatures elected to the Central Committee and as alternates at the 20th National Congress, and today's communique clearly states that only 279 actually arrived; those 97 are simply gone. Isn't it funny how this meeting was held? Before the meeting even started, more than a quarter of the Central Committee members had simply evaporated. Even more absurd is that 24 full Central Committee members were disciplined on the spot, but only 10 alternates were promoted to fill the vacancies, leaving 14 full seats empty.
The positions in the Northeast are just left empty; he simply won't fill them. Why is this? Because the alternates who were supposed to fill those spots according to the rules are, well, either already in prison or on their way there. Of the 34 people announced as expelled, 18 were reported by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and 16 by the Central Military Commission. We won't go into too much detail about the people on that list; they are all old friends—Zhang Youxia, Liu Zhenli, Zhong Shaojun, Wang Zhenhua. Who are these four? We have already dug deep into these old friends in our previous episodes, so we won't repeat that today. Instead, let's look at the entire political and bureaucratic structure of the CCP now. The seven-member Military Commission team that Xi personally handpicked at the 20th National Congress has been completely decimated after three rounds of purges in just four years; the vice-chairmen and members have all been wiped out. Now, the entire Central Military Commission is left with only him and Zhang Shengmin, so he has the mindset of a commander with no troops. Zhang Shengmin is also just a placeholder, and this time there were zero additions to the Military Commission despite so many vacancies. It is what it is.
Just stuffing Zhang Shengmin alone into the Politburo means that the Military Commission still consists of just these two guys, one chairman and one vice chairman, which is basically the setup of a commander with no troops. The theater command level is even more ruthless; basically, all theater commands are in a state of total annihilation. Look at people like Liu Jingsong, the political commissar of the Eastern Theater Command; Huang Ming, the commander of the Central Theater Command; Wang Haibin, the commander of the Western Theater Command; Li Qiaoming, the commander of the Army; Zhang Hongbing, the political commissar of the People's Armed Police; as well as Li Wei, the political commissar of the Information Support Department; plus Zhang Lin, the head of the Military Commission's Logistic Support Department, and Wang Peng, the head of the Training and Management Department. Everyone can see the whole picture: the forces guarding Beijing against Taiwan, the forces facing India, Xinjiang, and Tibet, plus the two largest ground forces of the Army and the People's Armed Police have all been completely wiped clean. Most importantly, we need to see a shift. Those fucking brainless wolf warriors from back in the day, who were basically just the piss pots of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bastards—as has been said, if you hang out with these CCP bastards, you'll be starved twelve times in three days, damn it. The CCP's gun barrel has basically been completely uprooted in one sweep, and they still want to fight.
Fight Taiwan? My ass! What about Taiwan? So everyone should think about this question: why would the Military Commission rather leave positions vacant than fill them? You see, if the CCP wanted to fill a Military Commission member spot, it would be too simple; it doesn't need a shred of democratic procedure at all. Everyone just raises their hand at a plenary session, and it could be stuffed full in a day. But no, they just fucking refuse to fill it. What is the fundamental logic behind this? It is that Emperor You Xi simply cannot even trust a single active-duty general anymore. He would rather let this highest military command body turn into a fucking empty shell than dare to let any other position and power slip out of his hands. Now the military layout has also become clear: Emperor You Xi's approach is to completely scrap the entire combat command chain and replace it with what? He is replacing it with secret agents and the Discipline Inspection Commission chains to directly suppress the military. This is the exact same playbook Stalin used after wiping out his marshals and replacing commanders with CCP secret agents. Alright, let's keep going. The gun barrels on the Military Commission side have collapsed, so let's look at the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection side. Didn't they report eighteen people? The eighteen people they reported formed a core structural line.
This structural line is a bit different from the military. What is this structural line? It is that the entire military-industrial technical technocrat group led by Ma Xingrui was uprooted by the roots. From aerospace, China Shipbuilding, and China National Nuclear Corporation to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the military-civil fusion sector, they all suffered total annihilation on the same day. Why were these technocrats favored by Emperor You Xi back then? Actually, this is easy to understand. In a dictator's personnel portrait, tech experts with a science and engineering background lack the bloodline of red second generations, have no local factions, understand the business, and are obedient. They are simply the perfect tools for him to manipulate the whole-nation system. So why did this entire line collapse in an instant? This is precisely a structural dead end where the totalitarian black box and technological monopoly combine. It's a very simple problem: the CCP is essentially a bandit organization, and the military-industrial complex is a juicy piece of meat, furthermore the easiest place in all of China to gang up to make money and fool around. Look at the crappy account books of the military-industrial complex; they are all labeled as state secrets, which act as a shield. What does this lead to? Outside audits.
They simply cannot get in. Plus, the technical threshold is still relatively high, and outsiders cannot understand it at all. How much a single part is reported to cost, and whether it was manufactured or not, is entirely up to a fucking mouth. What was the situation over the past ten years? Trillions upon trillions were poured in, and then these people had the opportunity to do what? Close the doors and divide the spoils, and then falsify layer by layer to fool things along. As a result, when the Rocket Force's rotten accounts were flipped over, it went all the way to the bottom. Following the vine of buying equipment upward, there wasn't a single fucking good thing among those building missiles, building ships, or engaging in nuclear power. Did everyone see another structural change from this? That is, Emperor You Xi's past unfinished projects used to rot bit by bit; one side would rot without delaying the others, just like Xiongan rotting, which at most meant just rotting that one piece of Xiongan. The big chip fund rotted, and it was just that fund. What is the situation now? These points are beginning to connect into lines, and the lines are beginning to turn into planes. Look at how that missing quarter of people disappeared; you probably have an idea in your hearts.
After talking about all this, let's look at a sentence in the communiqué. How did this communiqué put it? The communiqué says that comprehensively strengthening Party self-governance in the new era has eliminated the serious hidden dangers existing within the Party, the state, and the military. In other words, what does this mean? These people aren't just guilty of stealing some money; they posed a threat to his power, or he thought they posed a threat. Moreover, this sentence also has a previous life. Actually, this paragraph was already brought out ten years ago at the 18th National Congress, but back at the 18th National Congress, there were clear targets—it was specifically aimed at those targets. When the CCP first invented this set of terms to brag, the people being dealt with were Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, and that bunch in the military like Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou. To him, that could be considered a solid list of political enemies from the previous dynasty. Even when copied again in 2022 at the 20th National Congress, it was at least putting a lid on the coffin of past old accounts. But four years later, not a single fucking word of the exact same sentence was changed, and it was moved wholesale into the communique of the Fifth Plenary Session, while the newly covered targets became Zhang Youxia, Liu Zheli, Zhong Shaojun, and...
Looking at Wang Renhua and this group of people, doesn't this simply look like a roster of the current regime's direct lineage? The same phrase: the first time it is uttered, it comes from someone liquidating others; the second time, it comes from someone liquidating themselves. Why? Because in a system that severs all horizontal channels of information, autocratic power can only judge who poses a threat, and is utterly incapable of judging the other party's stance. Therefore, this fucking idiot has been emphasizing jumping ship or loyalty all this time, but his judgment is limited. What can he base it on? He can only judge based on proximity to this power. Consequently, the entire chain of suspicion starts from those who are close and hold resources. This turns into a problem: whether you actually intend to revolt against him is one thing, but whether you have the capability to take action is entirely another. Therefore, the whole situation transforms into a scenario where, as long as you have the capability to take action, your weight in the suspicion function of Emperor You Xi will only become higher. Next, let us run the numbers—just look at the attendance rate. The members of the Central Committee elected at the 20th National Congress totaled 200.
And 5; the alternate members of the Central Committee numbered 171, making a total of 376 people. However, the overall attendance rate was only 74.2%, with a total of 97 absentees. Looking at this number by itself is not scary enough; let us look at the slope. The total attendance rate at the First Plenary Session in October 2022 was 98.7%, at the Second Plenary Session in February 2023 it was 99.2%, by the Third Plenary Session in July 2024 it dropped to 96.8%, and by the Fourth Plenary Session in October of last year, the attendance rate plummeted off a cliff to 83.8%. Then, at the Fifth Plenary Session in October of this year, it dropped directly to 74.2%, a full 22.6 percentage points lost in two years. The absences of the Central Committee members can actually be calculated. How is it calculated in normal years? It is 100% minus the number of people hospitalized. But now, absence itself is a political signal. To put it bluntly, those who did not come to the meeting are basically either already in trouble or on their way to trouble. The accounting does not stop here: the Fifth Plenary Session disciplined 24.
Formal members of the Central Committee at once, but only promoted 10 alternate members to fill the vacancies, leaving a full 14 Central Committee seats empty. They were just left vacant, simply not filled. What do we see from this? It is that the current politics of the Chinese Communist Party has completely fallen into a very, very chaotic state. Why say this? Because what is written in the CCP Constitution is actually very explicit and very rigid. Once a vacancy arises among the Central Committee members, alternate members must be promoted in order of the number of votes received. This matter has zero flexibility within the CCP's own constitution. But in actual operation, just look at this situation and you will know everything. In fact, the CCP Constitution has long since been discarded. Starting from October of last year, when the Fourth Plenary Session promoted 11 people, skipping 7 alternate members who received more votes—among them were Fang Yongxiang, Director of the Military Commission General Office, and Fang Hongwei, Secretary of the Xi'an Municipal Party Committee. Look at the aesthetic of names under Emperor You Xi, it is either Red Soldier or Red Guard. Emperor You Xi's aesthetic for names is really—sigh, nothing more to say. Then, exactly one year later, these two.
Both names officially appeared on the expulsion list from the Party at the Fifth Plenary Session. This validates an empirical rule we discussed previously: those alternate members who are skipped are most likely the ones currently under investigation. Following this rule, this time before the meeting, those who should have been promoted by vote count were Fu Wenhua, Hong Liang, Ji Lin, Zhu Wenxiang, and Zhu Hexin, but these unlucky folks were skipped once again. While I cannot assert that these five bastards are in trouble, the CCP hasn't given any explanation either. Adding up the numbers: 34 publicly disciplined individuals, and subtracting these 34 from the 97 absentees leaves about 60-odd people who were neither disciplined nor able to show their faces. Coupled with the 14 empty seats and the 5 skipped individuals, I estimate that between 60 and 80 people within the 20th Central Committee are in a state of half-life, accounting for 16% to 21% of the entire 376 people—literally double the number on that list of 34 bastards. Where does this number sit within historical coordinates? Look at this, in 1968 the CCP's.
8th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee had 97 Central Committee members at the time, then 10 croaked, leaving a scheduled attendance of 87 bastards, but the actual attendees numbered only 40 people—meaning less than half. Ten alternate members were temporarily drafted that day just to barely exceed the majority. But even during the Cultural Revolution, this headcount wasn't actually that low. Why say this? Because among the non-voting attendees, the members of the Cultural Revolution Group and the heads of various provincial revolutionary committees totaled 74 people, which was even more than the formal members. That instance was the absolute extreme of the Central Committee being substantially hollowed out. Let us look at the Soviet Communist Party side: at the 17th Congress in 1934, that convention also bore a boastful title called the Congress of Victors, meaning Stalin had taken complete control and opponents had been completely eradicated, electing 139 Central Committee and alternate members. By 1937 to 1938, out of the 139, ninety-eight were shot dead, accounting for 70% of all Central Committee members. After mentioning these two historical data points, has everyone noticed one thing—that is, purges.
The intensity is no longer about whether there is an opponent or not. In the past, I might have fallen into the misconception that there must be an opponent to have a purge. But after reading the report of the Fifth Plenary Session of the CCP today, I just chuckled. Hey, I feel there is no need for an opponent anymore; having an inner demon is enough. This inner demon is power itself. If it is built on the foundation of fear, then fear itself will become the inner demon of the person who promotes it. Do you see it? This bunch of 20th Central Committee members were all selected after Emperor You Xi gained complete control, and the result is that within four years, more than a quarter have been disciplined or are absent. The positive feedback of the fear of power, how should I put it? It is a state of phase-locking. Now, let's go a layer deeper. What is the phase-locking of the logic of power coupled with the positive feedback of power? In cybernetics, once two oscillators are phase-locked, they fall into a state—what state? They enter a vicious cycle of self-amplification.
In today's CCP officialdom, these two oscillators are, one, the extreme paranoia of Emperor You Xi, and what is the opposite side? It is the survival fear of the grassroots bureaucrats. The fucking idiot Emperor You Xi tightens his grip on power, and the more he cuts off the channels for horizontal communication in the officialdom, the more he becomes a blind and deaf person who can neither hear any information nor see any substantive content. Then this fucking idiot will fall into a state of total darkness. Once in total darkness, the sense of insecurity in his heart will rise exponentially, and what can he do? He can only rely on harsher purges and denser secret service surveillance to find this sense of security. Then, conversely, what about the bureaucratic system? The officials below, facing such erratic learning, the only way to survive is to shut up completely, then engage in layer-upon-layer fabrication, plus crazy buck-passing, keeping all real crises under the lid. The tighter it is covered below, and the more obedient they appear, the more Emperor You Xi, that fucking idiot, looks at those dead-water-like fake faces and feels that those below are plotting a rebellion.
Consequently, the butcher's knife of the next round of purges will fall even harder. So when you drive power with fear, fear will inevitably feed back into the paranoia of this power. The two paths are thus locked together tightly; there is no mechanism to brake, and it can only speed all the way to the disintegration of the system. Because maintaining the energy of a system has boundary values; break the boundary, and the whole system falls apart immediately. In this atmosphere of officialdom where power and fear are tightly phase-locked, what kind of monster is the political form that is finally produced? It has directly killed the bureaucratic factional politics that existed in the CCP for decades, even under autocracy. It has alienated the entire regime state into what? It is a state of atomized, jailer-like centralized power, or perhaps it is more appropriate to call it a political zombie form. In the past, the officialdom at least had factions, interest exchanges, and implicit contracts for working and promotion. What is it now? Now it's a mess, it's all fucked up into a pot of porridge. As long as you have resources and believe that the daydream of that fucking idiot Xi Jinping is not feasible, you have become disloyal in his eyes.
I really don't believe that for the CCP's garbage system, corruption is any big deal. During the pandemic, that fucking idiot Xi Jinping used his power to lock so many people at home, locked them up for three fucking years, and forced you to have your throats swabbed every day. Just the money from these throat swabs, how much money did Emperor You Xi's family make? It must be an astronomical figure. So what is the situation now? As long as this bunch of CCP thugs are not a group of stubbornly brain-damaged things, they should be able to see one thing immediately: in this system, having ability is the original sin. Doing real work is seeking death, and furthermore, the closer you are to the core, the faster you die. Thus, the entire bureaucratic machine only has two organs left turning: one is the infinitely expanding knife handle of the discipline inspection secret service, and the other is the atomized, temporary-worker-like jailer who is completely shattered in horizontal connections, dares not make friends, dares not make decisions, and only knows how to bow their heads to save their lives. See? Atomization will also backfire. The biggest significant feature of this political form is what? It is the complete nihilism of the system and the complete shattering of the bureaucratic region.
Look at what? From the succession order of alternates written in the Party Constitution to the promotion steps and age red lines that have lasted for decades, these were all strict rules of the CCP's political situation, and now they have all become fucking toilet paper. What is the essence of politics? It is the power to maintain order. Now the internal order of the CCP can be said to be dead in name only. Here, I have to say to the influencers for the first time: if you really, really like this fucking CCP party, then you should immediately establish a 'Protect the Party' team and march into Beijing to seize the king! This is the highlight moment of your love for the Party. Why is political expectation so important? Because the cost of unpredictability is too high. Everyone should know that once any written political text stabilizes, what can happen? Bureaucrats can calculate expectations. Only with expectations can the boundaries of rewards and punishments be clear. In China, how can we get out of the Latin American trap? In that episode, I talked to you about the importance of expectations and trust. What are expectations doing? They are things that reduce friction costs to the greatest extent.
Any organized group will inevitably generate transaction costs. But what about that fucking idiot Xi Jinping? Because he has no fucking ability, what can he use? He uses fear to maintain a deterrent for his power. In the eyes of a brain-dead dictator, a reduction in internal organizational trust is his greatest enemy. Therefore, the rules must be turned into what? Into a Schrödinger's black box. Hey, promoting someone depends entirely on his fucking momentary favor, and taking someone down? It all depends on a sudden thunderclap in the middle of the night. It's about keeping these high-ranking officials in a state of perpetual, blind weightlessness. That is why I am now very much looking forward to the disintegration of the CCP, and it might happen even faster than I imagined. Do you all know what will happen under this political form? The current CCP system has completely turned into a freak. The logic of how the CCP's state machine operates has also been completely reversed. How is it reversed? It has fully degenerated from solving problems in a predictable political environment to being anchored where? Anchored in eliminating responsibility. Because if you fucking investigate, you can trace back twenty years; even officials who have been retired for ten years get arrested, like Huang Qifan and the like. So at this point, the most rational survival strategy for officials—hey, take note, it's a survival strategy, not even an optimal strategy anymore—
What is the survival strategy? It is to engage in extreme performative loyalty in political posturing, and then engage in complete defensive paralysis in specific operations. Everyone spends their days not thinking about how to pay off debts or how to save the economy; they think more about what? Hey, how to design a liability-free closed loop in documents? How to set traps and leave evidence for colleagues? They would rather watch local debts rot and the economy come to a standstill than step in to solve anything. What will they do? They write all matters that need to be handled into request-based documents and submit them upward, letting that fucking idiot Xi Jinping act as the biggest section chief in all of China. The most ruthless part is that this form also carries a mechanism of reverse selection and self-cannibalization. It's very simple. Where does the performance of CCP bureaucrats come from now? It comes from performing and ass-kissing. Just look at what kind of fucking scum can climb up through this funnel of fear among the current CCP bureaucrats; they are all cruel officials who don't touch business but only know how to persecute people and handle discipline, or eunuchs who handle propaganda or write materials. But after these overseers take power, can the meat grinder stop? It simply cannot stop.
Because once the peripheral practitioners and operational bureaucrats are purged, these overseers holding the knives and pens will themselves become the next group of people closest to the core of power, which means they will also become the newest hidden danger to that fucking idiot Xi Jinping. The downfall of people like Wang Renhua, the secretary of the Central Military Commission's Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and Zhong Shaojun, the chief secretary of the Central Military Commission, are very, very hard blows. Therefore, in this funnel of centralized suspicion, there are no permanent enforcers, only expendable materials in batches. When the guards and cruel officials also start to be treated as hidden dangers and purged in batches, this regime has already entered a death spiral of eating its own internal organs. And when this death spiral of power and fear reaches its end, Emperor You Xi, who is looking at holding the 21st National Congress next year, will immediately hit the most unsolvable dead end for a dictator, which is the paradox of naming a successor. Let's look at the first point first. If he names a successor now, what will happen? If you want the successor to be able to stabilize the current mess in the Party, government, and military, you have to let him enter the inner circle, you have to let him intervene in the military's supreme power, and you have to let him plant his own people underneath.
But now, everyone in the court is in danger, and they are fucking dreaming of finding a new big tree to save their lives. As soon as the crown prince's spearhead appears, rest assured, the officials underneath who are already scared out of their wits will immediately sneak off to run under the new master's gate, and in the blink of an eye, they will all go to worship at the new shrine. Just think about how suspicious Emperor You Xi is now. Whoever is close to him and whoever holds real power in their hands, he suspects them. He couldn't even tolerate Zhong Shaojun, his chief secretary who had been with him for twenty years, so how could he tolerate a crown prince who is rightfully waiting to succeed him? And this crown prince thing, under this kind of political situation, what are the chances of successfully succeeding? Even in ancient times, the probability of a biological son succeeding his own father was less than 20%, let alone someone who has no fucking blood relationship with him at all. So as long as he dares to establish a crown prince, that person will become a thorn in his side that very day, and they will absolutely not live until the day of succession; they will be killed by his own hands. Then, let's deduce the second step in reverse. Hey, what if he refuses to name a successor no matter what? If it just keeps spiraling down like this, what will happen? Look at it now, a quarter of the Central Committee has already collapsed, and the Military Commission only has two bare-bones commanders left. What kind of people are being replaced in the localities? They have all been replaced by isolated guards with no foundation.
Under this framework, which has no successor and no institutionalized succession plan, the life expectancy of the entire Chinese Communist Party is tightly bound to just one person. And what about this asshole's health? Well, to borrow the words of that famous League of Legends sewer troll: look, you don't look so good. For the officials at the bottom, since no one knows who this broken city will belong to tomorrow, any long-term governance is fucking retarded. Therefore, the optimal solution for everyone is to frantically cash in one last time before the internal chaos leads to a complete disintegration, or simply huddle up and wait to die.
What is the most terrifying consequence? The most terrifying consequence is purging; the bunch of morons left behind are all ruthless officials who do not trust one another. Refusing to designate a successor means that your brothers are idiots. The day he kicks the bucket amidst public rejoicing, the entire system won't even have a transitional authority capable of holding things together, leaving behind a power vacuum with no rules or bottom lines. When the military holding the handles of the knives and those guarding the localities realize they might be silenced by the other side, they will have no choice but to flip the table and fight a bloody battle on the spot. So you see, designating a successor is seeking death right now, and not designating one means after me, the deluge—this is the dead end he has welded shut for himself.
Finally, let's work backward from this communiqué and imagine what kind of panic-stricken atmosphere permeated the Fifth Plenary Session. Just think, there should have been 376 of them sitting in that hall, but a bunch of chairs were left empty. Sitting there as one of the 279 survivors, you surely wouldn't feel comfortable. Then looking at the document, people like Zhang Youxia, Zhu Lili, and Zhong Shaojun were also expelled. Fourteen alternate members of the Central Committee were left vacant rather than being filled. And the five poor bastards sitting in the front row of the alternate seating were publicly bypassed. Their mindset must have been that while their bodies were still in the venue, their souls had long since flown to Qincheng. I can only say that when it comes to destroying the Chinese Communist Party, Emperor You Xi is truly a fucking great comrade-in-arms. Alright, that is all for the broadcast today. If you like my program, please click the subscribe button below. If you want to support me, you can join the membership channel. Welcome to every driver's in-depth program, and welcome to join the Good Men Network. See you in the next show.