Xi Jinping Loses the Power to Set the Tone for the Fifth Plenum! Hu Chunhua at the Core — Who Will Be in the Seven-Member Standing Committee of the 21st Party Congress? Anomalies in the National Day Speech; the Taiwan Strait Issue Returns to the Hu Jintao Line; All Current CMC Members Disappear! [Jiang Feng Vision 20261001 Episode 502]

This episode analyzes the subtle shifts in power within Zhongnanhai on the eve of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th CCP Central Committee. It points out that the top leader was absent from announcing the plenary session and lost the power to set its agenda. In his National Day speech, the rhetoric regarding Taiwan returned to the "peaceful development" era of Hu Jintao, and the current ranks of the Central Military Commission members were collectively hollowed out in the official press release. At the same time, the program explores potential power succession lineups and the personnel transfers of several local officials.

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Hello friends, welcome to Jiang Feng Vision. Today, Jiang Feng will start by dropping the conclusion: the Fifth Plenary Session has not yet been held, but the person in Zhongnanhai has already lost the power to call the shots at this plenary session. At last night's National Day reception, something truly abnormal occurred. There was one thing that, logically, should have been mentioned at this time, yet he avoided it entirely. This gap is very small, so small that most people wouldn't notice it after listening to the entire speech. But if you move the timeline back one year and place it alongside where the Fifth Plenary Session stands today, the implications change immediately. So today, we won't rush to look at the flowery language on stage; we will focus on this gap. If a General Secretary no longer sets the tone in advance for a Central Plenary Session that he is supposed to preside over in just over twenty days, then is this meeting still his meeting? On the same day, problems emerged in two other areas: one involving the Taiwan Strait and the other involving the military. Each of the three incidents might be explainable on its own, but once placed on the same day and within the same countdown to the Fifth Plenary Session, they all point to the same question: who is setting the tone for the Fifth Plenary Session?

Let's turn the clock back one year and make a historical comparison. At the National Day reception on September 30, 2025, under the bright lights of the Great Hall of the People's banquet hall, that person stood on the podium and clearly announced to the entire Party that our Party would hold the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee next month. Not only did he take the initiative to announce the plenary session, but he also told everyone directly that the Fourth Plenary Session would study and formulate proposals for the 15th Five-Year Plan. In the CCP's political script, the top leader announcing a Central Plenary Session to the entire Party, and even to the whole world, in advance is in itself a clear power move. The subtext is not complicated: I define this meeting, I tell you the topics first, and the entire Party will follow this direction. However, fast forward to September 30 of this year, at the same banquet hall and the same National Day reception, the situation has changed. The Fifth Plenary Session is not something happening six months later; it is scheduled to be held in Beijing from October 26 to 29. The Politburo had already placed the documents to be submitted for deliberation at the Fifth Plenary Session on the table on September 21. The stage was set, and there were only twenty-some days left until the curtain rose. Yet, at this critical juncture, a very glaring gap appeared in his National Day speech. He talked about the implementation of the 15th Five-Year Plan, praised the economy for moving forward under pressure, and spoke about deepening reform and opening up. He covered Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and diplomacy, but when he reached the door of the Fifth Plenary Session, he bypassed it. Last year, the same person on the same occasion took the initiative to say that the Fourth Plenary Session would be held next month; this year, with the Fifth Plenary Session even closer, he didn't even mention its name. Wouldn't you say that is strange?

Friends, the political press releases of the CCP are not talk shows. Especially for a National Day speech of the highest protocol broadcast nationwide, every sentence included or excluded is a matter of politics. If something was said last year but not this year, we cannot simply assume the secretary forgot to insert a line. My judgment is that the boss is losing the agenda-setting power over the Fifth Plenary Session, which is the most critical power to set the tone. In the poker game of black-box politics, what constitutes real power? It is not sitting in the center of the rostrum under the spotlight for those final few days, reading a script from a red folder. Real power belongs to whoever can tell the whole Party before the meeting begins why this banquet is being held, what the main course is, what the rules are, who should be promoted, and who should hand over power after the banquet ends. Whoever can set the questions is the one who truly controls the meeting. Even more fatal mysteries are hidden in the already public agenda of this Fifth Plenary Session. What has been officially placed on the table for deliberation at the Fifth Plenary Session this year is not some new five-year economic plan—the 15th Five-Year Plan was the topic of last year's Fourth Plenary Session. This time, the Politburo is studying the major issue of persistently advancing comprehensive strict Party governance. What is being submitted to the Fifth Plenary Session is a 'Decision of the CCP Central Committee on Several Major Issues Concerning Persistently Advancing Comprehensive Strict Party Governance.' Official jargon is easy to make ordinary people drowsy, so let's translate it into plain language: 'Party rectification.' What does Party rectification mean? It means re-establishing discipline, calculating responsibilities, investigating cadres, and changing personnel. If you look one layer higher, the question becomes more direct: Who has the qualification to rectify the Party? Who decides which high-level cadres stay? Who cleans up the political debts left over from the past decade? And who can insert a name or cross out another before the 21st National Congress? This is the truly fatal aspect of this year's Fifth Plenary Session. For the past decade, the phrase 'comprehensive strict Party governance' has been the sharpest knife for the person at the pinnacle of the tower. He relied on anti-corruption, inspections, and disciplinary reviews to remove batch after batch of people in the military and local governments whom he did not trust, and then replaced them with his own people. At that time, whoever controlled strict Party governance controlled the political life-and-death register of the cadres. But today, friends, the problem has reversed. The knife is still the same knife, but is the handle still in his hand? Since the 20th National Congress, the Central Military Commission team that he personally assembled has been torn apart, and personnel in local governments are being replaced one after another. What the entire Party is really watching now is no longer just whether the boss can still use strict Party governance to purge others, but rather, now that this Fifth Plenary Session has put 'comprehensive strict Party governance' on the table, which way this knife will actually fall. That is an entirely different matter. When strict Party governance shifts from a tool used by the boss to clear the field into a major issue that the Fifth Plenary Session itself must re-discuss and re-regulate, then when you look back at why he didn't announce the agenda for the Fifth Plenary Session at the National Day reception, the flavor is completely different. Last year, it was he who set the questions for the whole Party at the Fourth Plenary Session; this year's Fifth Plenary Session has turned into a session to settle accounts with him. If this judgment holds, then what we really need to watch next is what things are no longer decided by him. And last night, the second answer already slipped out of his own mouth. When speaking about Taiwan, he recited four words again: 'peaceful development.' Friends, these four words, placed in today's context, are no longer just ordinary diplomatic rhetoric.

Having understood that the agenda-setting power of the Fifth Plenary Session is slipping away, let's continue to look at another seemingly calm but actually very meaningful speech at the Great Hall of the People last night. When the person at the pinnacle of the tower turned the manuscript to the Taiwan-related section, a sentence appeared in the official press release: 'Promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and advance the great cause of national reunification.' Friends, if you look at this sentence in isolation, it is actually not new. In the 2023 National Day speech, he also spoke of 'promoting the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.' So, what is truly interesting today is not that these words suddenly fell from the sky, but rather in which direction the tone of the National Day speeches over these past two years is shifting. Let's take out last year's speech and compare them. At the 2025 National Day reception, when he spoke about Taiwan, the first half was also 'deepening cross-strait exchanges and cooperation,' but what followed was 'resolutely opposing Taiwan independence separatist acts and interference by external forces, and resolutely defending national sovereignty and territorial integrity.' This year, the front part still includes 'resolutely cracking down on Taiwan independence separatist forces and opposing interference by external forces,' but what is re-attached at the end has become 'promoting the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and advancing the great cause of national reunification.' Savor this change: 'anti-independence' has not been removed, and 'reunification' has not been removed, but what has been truly placed back at the political focal point is 'peaceful development.' Did the person in Zhongnanhai reflect behind closed doors and suddenly achieve a moment of compassion overnight? Of course not. The lines spoken by political figures are never about their mood, let alone a sudden discovery of conscience. What I am truly concerned about is why, at this critical juncture before the Fifth Plenary Session, this set of Taiwan-related language, which was the most recognizable during the Hu Jintao era, has been placed back at the focal point of the sentence.

Anyone familiar with the political jargon of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) knows that the peaceful development of cross-strait relations was not invented by the top leader. This system was truly systematized and theorized, and even forged into a complete policy line, during the Hu era. Back then, the CCP officially put forward the important thought of the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, which was matched downward by the institutionalization of economic and trade exchanges and consultations, and cross-strait mutual trust was even discussed in terms of establishing a military and security mutual trust mechanism. To put it bluntly, Hu Jintao's approach was not to bring the strait to the brink of accidental clashes every day, but to first tie the two sides tightly together through business exchanges and negotiations, and then slowly push toward political arrangements.

After the top leader came to power, these few words did not completely disappear from the political dictionary, but the entire focus changed. The Taiwan issue has become increasingly tied to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and his historical positioning. Military aircraft circling Taiwan, island-encircling exercises, and crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait have made the proportion of military deterrence heavier year by year, and Taiwan has thus become a very special political card in his hands. The reason why this card is important is not complicated: in an era of peace, if a leader wants to break term conventions and stay in office term after term, just relying on the phrase "I want to keep working" is naturally not enough. He needs a grand historical undertaking that is difficult for anyone else to take over and can be described as indispensable to him. Completing reunification happens to be the political project most easily packaged into such a thing. As long as the Taiwan Strait maintains high pressure, and as long as there is a constant sense of urgency throughout the entire party and military that a major task has yet to be completed, then whoever wants to replace him can easily be asked a counter-question: if the great undertaking is only halfway done, who will take responsibility if a crisis breaks out after changing the commander now? Therefore, as we have been discussing in previous episodes, Taiwan is not just a diplomatic or military issue; it is also a card used by that person in Zhongnanhai to find a political justification for his fourth term.

However, a very subtle change is currently taking place regarding this card. First, looking at the military, He Weidong and Miao Hua, who were once promoted to high positions in the Central Military Commission by him personally, have successively fallen into trouble, and Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli have also been officially dealt with. Today's Central Military Commission is completely different from the lineup when the 20th National Congress had just concluded. Wanting to fight a real, major war in the Taiwan Strait relies on shouting slogans about daring to fight and being sure to win on Xinwen Lianbao, but in the end, someone must formulate combat plans, someone must give orders, and someone must get the theater command's naval, air, and rocket forces moving together. With the military commission lineup itself being reshuffled, the difficulty for the highest level to casually use the Taiwan card as in the past is inherently rising.

Next, looking at the U.S.-China military channel, on August 31, General Yang Zhibun, commander of the Eastern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), met with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Chief Admiral Paparo in Canada. The Eastern Theater Command manages the direct front of the Taiwan Strait, and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command keeps its eyes on the Western Pacific. The two people who truly hold frontline combat command authority sat down together to talk about high-level communication to reduce miscalculation, as well as professionalism and safety during maritime and aerial encounters. On September 26, when the Chinese side announced eight outcomes of the visit to the United States, it additionally added that the Chinese and U.S. militaries agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding as soon as possible to strengthen crisis communication and prevention. Let us be precise here: this memorandum has not yet been formally signed, nor have its terms been published, and the Chinese military's recent patrols, exercises, and deterrence have likewise not stopped. Therefore, one cannot announce that Beijing has henceforth stored its weapons and put horses out to pasture based on an unsigned memorandum—that would be much too early.

Yet, the political aspect truly worth watching lies on another level: a institutionalized channel is being added to the frontline of the Taiwan Strait to prevent miscalculation and avoid loss of control. What does this mean? In the past, if military aircraft and warships from both sides confronted each other on the frontline, the most dangerous part was that neither side knew what the other would do next, and a single accidental clash could escalate all the way up. Now, the two most direct theater commanders are sitting down first, and they are also preparing to turn crisis communication into an institutionalized practice. The guns are still there and military exercises are still happening, but guardrails are starting to be installed beside the gun barrels. Therefore, what Jiang Feng truly wants to say today is not that the military option has disappeared; the real change is that the threshold for using this card is being raised layer by layer. Externally, the Chinese and U.S. militaries are beginning to add mechanisms to prevent accidental clashes; internally, the original command lineup of the Central Military Commission is undergoing massive reorganization. By September 30, the person standing on the podium at the National Day reception once again put promoting the peaceful development of cross-strait relations back into the political concluding remarks of his speech on Taiwan. Putting these three things together, the implication becomes clear.

When I said earlier that the forceful reunification card is being reined in, it does not mean that someone took the combat plan out of the drawer and tore it up, nor does it mean that Beijing has henceforth announced it will never use force. The true meaning is that this card is increasingly no longer something that the person in Zhongnanhai can play however he wants, whenever he wants. This is precisely what makes the four words "peaceful development" so interesting today.

Friends, a political line is sometimes more honest than personnel changes. A person is still sitting in that chair, his title remains unchanged for a day, and Xinwen Lianbao still calls him the core. But if he starts saying a different set of words and executing a different rhythm, one must ask: has he changed the line, or has the person who decides the line changed? This question had a third puzzle piece on the evening of September 30. Because on the very same day he re-read the words "peaceful development," Xinhua News Agency issued two highest-level activity communiqués from morning to evening, and a certain military hierarchy unexpectedly disappeared from both at the same time.

So the question arises: if the Taiwan card is becoming increasingly difficult to play, what on earth is actually left of the gun that truly controls this card?

In the logic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictatorship, there are two things that are absolutely off-limits for jokes: the 'seal' (political authority) and the 'gun' (military power). The seal determines who can sign documents, while the gun determines whether those signatures actually carry any weight. Yet, on September 30th, in two of the highest-level activity press releases issued by Xinhua News Agency, a massive gap appeared precisely in the most critical seat of military power. First, look at the Martyrs' Day memorial ceremony at Tiananmen Square in the morning. The man in Zhongnanhai led a group of high-ranking officials across the square to lay flower baskets before the Monument to the People's Heroes. Subsequently, Xinhua listed the categories of attendees: members of the Political Bureau, secretaries of the Secretariat, and vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission (CMC), followed by the National People's Congress, the State Council, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and the CPPCC. However, after scouring this list, the category of 'members of the Central Military Commission,' which was clearly present last year, was gone this year. By the National Day reception that evening, things became even more interesting. In the same National Day reception last year, Xinhua's original wording included both 'members of the Central Military Commission' and 'comrades who have served as members of the Central Military Commission'—one category for incumbents and one for retirees. This year? It listed the vice chairmen of the CMC, then took a long detour, and specifically left in 'comrades who have served as members of the Central Military Commission.' Friends, consider the absurdity of this: the category for retirees remains, but the category for incumbents is gone. This is no longer a matter of a Xinhua editor being careless and missing a few words, because two press releases, one in the morning and one in the evening, were written this way simultaneously. When compared to the previous year, where it was present and now it is not, the real answer is even more ruthless than just 'not daring to write it'—it is that the layer of 'CMC members' in the military commission structure established at the 20th National Congress has been hollowed out.

Let us put the list of the seven-member military commission from the conclusion of the 20th National Congress back on the table. At the very top is the CMC Chairman, followed by two vice chairmen, Zhang Youxia and He Weidong, and below them are four CMC members: Li Shangfu, Liu Zhenli, Miao Hua, and Zhang Shengmin. When these seven people stood in a row back then, that was the top military team hand-picked by the man at the pinnacle. Count them again today: the only one left, Zhang Shengmin, was promoted from CMC member to CMC vice chairman after the Fourth Plenary Session last year. In other words, not a single person remains from the original layer of four CMC members. This completely explains why that strange blank space appeared in the two press releases on September 30th. Last year, state media could openly write 'members of the Central Military Commission' because there were people sitting in that tier at the time. This year, copying those six characters would have been troublesome: Zhang Shengmin has already been promoted to vice chairman, and the others who originally sat in that tier have either been implicated in scandals, dismissed from their posts, or expelled. That is why the press release that evening featured that scene of dark humor: the category for retired CMC members remained, while the entire row for incumbent CMC members was gone. Over the past year, the outside world has focused on military anti-corruption, always watching to see who will fall next, which general will disappear, or which commander will suddenly stop appearing. But as we approach the eve of the Fifth Plenary Session, the most important question of the entire game has changed. It is no longer about who is going to be dismantled, but who will sit in those seats after the dismantling is done. Because the military commission cannot maintain such an extremely contracted structure forever. With millions of troops, five theater commands, various services and arms, the Rocket Force, the Military Aerospace Force, and the Cyberspace Force, daily command, personnel promotions, equipment development, and combat readiness all require a complete top-level military leadership structure to function. Therefore, what should have been watched before the Fifth Plenary Session was not how many more people were arrested, but who is being prepared to sit in those empty chairs. This is the most critical step in the restructuring of military power. If the man at the pinnacle could still pick people and arrange seating as he did at the 19th and 20th National Congresses, stuffing trusted people into the military commission one by one, then these empty chairs would be easy to fill. But for over a year, the old team has been dismantled layer by layer, yet the new team has been slow to be fully replenished. This in itself shows that the hardest part for the military commission today is no longer arresting people, but replacing them.

Just two days before the official release on September 30 featuring this row of empty chairs, a seemingly inconspicuous public event revealed a clue worth examining closely. On September 28, a report meeting on the advanced deeds of Comrade Wang Ji, a

The second one is Xu Kunlin. This person's career path is completely different from Wang Weizhong's. Wang Weizhong leans towards technology and local comprehensive governance, while Xu Kunlin is a typical economic technocrat. He worked at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) for many years, handling price anti-monopoly and fixed-asset investment—all of which are the most rigid departments for central economic regulation. Later, he went to Shanghai as vice mayor, then to Jiangsu as Suzhou Municipal Party Secretary and Governor. On September 30, 2025, he moved north to Liaoning to become the Provincial Party Secretary. Have you noticed that Wang Weizhong going to Inner Mongolia and Xu Kunlin going to Liaoning happened on the same day? This timing is very interesting. Two 20th Central Committee members, one transferred from Governor of Guangdong to Secretary of Inner Mongolia, the other from Governor of Jiangsu to Secretary of Liaoning. Replacing governors with provincial party secretaries on the same day is a very critical step in the career path of CCP cadres. A governor manages the government and is the second-in-command, while the provincial party secretary is the true top leader of a province. Before the 21st National Congress, sending two people with economic governance backgrounds to fill the provincial party secretary resume on the same day—you could say it's purely a coincidence, of course, but placed on the current timeline, Jiang Feng prefers to see it as a starting point worth remembering. Of course, between Xu Kunlin and Hu Chunhua, there is currently no working relationship like the one Wang Weizhong has that can be directly cited, so he cannot be forcibly inserted into the Hu Chunhua faction. However, if the subsequent team really needs to deal with the mess of private enterprise confidence, local fiscal and industrial investment, a person like Xu Kunlin, who has walked all the way from the NDRC through Shanghai, Suzhou, and Jiangsu to the old industrial base in the Northeast, is precisely a very practical resume. It is too early to say whether he is a Standing Committee member, but at least judging from the resume structure, he has already stood on the edge of the next Politburo table.

The third is Yin Hong. This line of Yin Hong cannot be simply categorized as Hu Chunhua's people. He grew up in the Shanghai system for a long time and later went out from Shanghai, serving as Governor of Henan, Secretary of Gansu, and is now Secretary of Jiangxi. These segments of his resume—Shanghai, Central Plains, Northwest, and Jiangxi—span a very large range. He is a 20th Central Committee member himself. The place where such a person is truly worth watching is precisely not which faction he belongs to, but that he does not look like a pure direct descendant of anyone. If the Zhongnanhai of the future really wants to restore some kind of collective leadership, the new seven-person team will definitely have such a role, because the Politburo Standing Committee is not a company's board of directors; it is impossible for all seven chairs to be occupied by one family's confidants. The reformists need people, the conservatives also need people, the local system needs representatives, and the central ministries also need representatives. The economic sector and the party affairs sector must also keep each other in check. Therefore, Hu Chunhua's team is by no means equal to Hu Chunhua's direct descendants. If a person like Yin Hong is really pushed up in the future, it is more like the name that all parties can accept at the negotiating table—not anyone's lead horse, but not necessarily opposed by any party. Such people are actually very valuable during power transitions.

The last one is Guan Zhiou. This person is different from the previous three. His biggest characteristic is one word: young. Born in 1969, he is not yet 57 years old this year. He worked in Liaoning for a long time, then went to Shandong, and then entered the National Forestry and Grassland Administration. At the end of 2024, he became the Minister of Natural Resources, and at the end of May this year, he was suddenly sent down to Hubei to take over as Provincial Party Secretary. This move is worth watching. A full minister of a central ministry suddenly going to Hubei, a central province with heavy political and economic weight, to be the top leader, clearly shows that he is filling in his local governance resume. However, Guan Zhiou has a very obvious problem: he is currently still an alternate member of the 20th Central Committee, so I do not agree with writing him directly as a hot candidate for the next Standing Committee member now. The span from an alternate member to a member of the Politburo Standing Committee is too large. Compared to the seven Standing Committee chairs, he looks more like a reserve at another level. First, see if he can enter the Politburo, then look at the next step. But his age is also an advantage. Wang Weizhong was born in 1962, Yin Hong in 1963, Xu Kunlin in 1965, and Guan Zhiou in 1969. If you line these people up, you will find that it does not look like a list of next-term Standing Committee members, but rather like a echelon with people in front and behind. Some are preparing to enter the highest level, some are filling in their Politburo resumes in the middle, and others are behind to hold the line for the next round. Because a real power transition never just changes the one person at the very top. If the boss changes but the finance, personnel, and security managers below are all people from the previous term, then this boss will be sidelined the next day. Zhongnanhai is the same. If Hu Chunhua really wants to take over, what he needs is not just his own appointment letter, but a whole team that can operate together. So for the next twenty days or so, we will only focus on two things: first, who is pushed into the venue of the Fifth Plenary Session, and second, whose name starts to be crossed out from its original position. Alright, let's talk here with friends today. Once the doors of the Fifth Plenary Session open, we will continue to check the list. Friends who like Jiang Feng's program, don't forget to like, follow, and forward. See you in the next episode.