Xi Jinping Rushes to Write His Own Epitaph! Who Is Pushing "Xi Steps Down, Li Takes Over"? Even If Xi Keeps the CMC Chairmanship, He Can't Become the Emperor Emeritus! Before the Fifth Plenum, 31 Provinces Reshuffle Their Leadership, Shi Taifeng Rearranges Official Titles, the Xi Family Army's Dominance Is Broken! [Jiang Feng Vision 20261021 Episode 519]

This article analyzes the political situation and personnel changes in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the 20th National Congress and before the Fifth Plenary Session. It explores Xi Jinping's efforts to establish his historical legacy regarding anti-corruption, the rumors of "Xi stepping down and Li taking over," Li Qiang's potential role as a successor, and the impact of the leadership reshuffle across 31 provinces and the purge of the military high command on the future power structure.

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Hello friends, welcome to Jiang Feng Vision. Old Xi is really interesting this time; he hasn't even retired yet, and he's already busy writing his own epitaph. After being emperor for fourteen years, what kind of great achievements has he left behind? The economy is in this state, diplomacy has made enemies on all sides, and the military is in complete disarray. After all is said and done, there is one achievement no one can deny: anti-corruption. Over these years, he has made life unbearable for officials in the Chinese bureaucracy and unbearable for generals in the People's Liberation Army. Now, before the Fifth Plenary Session has even been held, he is already busy writing his own historical merit book. After fighting "tigers and flies" for so many years, he has to leave behind a certificate proving that his efforts weren't in vain, and ideally, use this certificate to exchange for a guarantee of a safe exit.

But Old Xi has another plan in mind. In the last two days, rumors of "Xi stepping down and Li taking over" have resurfaced overseas. Back then, the "Li" was Li Keqiang; now it has been replaced by Li Qiang. The rumored version of the handover is that he will pass the position of General Secretary to his old secretary, Ding Xuexiang will become Premier, and he himself will continue to serve as Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Look at how shrewd this deal is: he keeps the credit for himself, leaves the trouble to Li Qiang, and keeps the gun in his own hands. This isn't retirement for Old Xi; it's just changing seats to continue being emperor. But today, we are going to talk about the most fatal flaw in this deal. Even if Hu and Wen were willing to let Li Qiang transition, and even if the military eventually accepted these handover conditions, he still wouldn't be able to become the retired emperor behind the scenes. Because he forgot one thing: when he brought Li Qiang into Zhongnanhai, it was because he had the final say alone. But now, if collective leadership is restored and Li Qiang sits as General Secretary, it will rely on a different set of power arrangements. By that time, who will this old secretary actually listen to? Will Old Xi's word still count? What's even more remarkable is that while everyone is staring at the two chairs of General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, another grand drama of distributing official positions has already quietly begun. The top party and government officials in Anhui and Henan have been replaced, and Jiangsu is even more interesting: the Provincial Party Secretary is still in place, but the officials in charge of promoting cadres, disciplinary reviews, and party affairs have been replaced one after another. A new round of provincial party congresses across the country has now officially begun. Just think, if a new batch of local warlords has already been replaced for the next term, even if Old Xi manages to push Li Qiang up, who else can he rely on to guard his regime? This is the most worth-watching drama before the Fifth Plenary Session: while he is busy arranging who will succeed him, the personnel team that determines who the successor will listen to in the future is being reshuffled.

Let us start with the recent developments regarding leadership changes across various provinces. On the surface, the provincial party congresses of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appear to be gatherings of hundreds or thousands of delegates listening to reports, applauding, voting, and ultimately electing a new provincial party committee. However, those truly familiar with the CCP officialdom know that the most valuable commodity here is whose name ends up on the list of the provincial standing committee after the meeting concludes. This time, the timing is particularly sensitive: next year is the 21st National Congress, and rumors regarding top-level succession are already swirling. Now, all 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities across the country are initiating a new round of party committee reshuffles. On October 19, Anhui and Xinjiang opened their sessions first, followed by Henan and Shanxi on the 20th. Pay attention to this time gap, friends: Beijing's Fifth Plenary Session will not open until the 26th, yet the provinces have already begun changing their next-term teams. Official positions at the local level cannot wait until next year to be arranged; if one had to wait until a new General Secretary takes office before hastily appointing provincial party secretaries, governors, and organization department heads, wouldn't that become a commander without an army? Therefore, what is most worth watching in this provincial reshuffle is who has the ability to send their people into the next term in advance, and whose people are being shown the door.

On October 19, the 12th Anhui Provincial Party Congress opened in Hefei. Provincial Party Secretary Li Lecheng delivered the report on stage, while Acting Governor Wang Dongwei presided, with 779 delegates sitting below—naturally a scene of fluttering red flags and thunderous applause. On September 23, the central authorities announced that former Provincial Party Secretary Liang Yansun was leaving office, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Lecheng was parachuted into Anhui, and former Governor Wang Qingxian also departed, with Wang Dongwei taking over as acting governor. By October 15, another crucial position changed hands: Xu Yongke, formerly the party secretary of Nanning in Guangxi, appeared in the position of Secretary of the Anhui Provincial Discipline Inspection Commission. The provincial party secretary is the top leader, the governor manages government operations, the economy, and finance, and the discipline inspection commission secretary oversees who violates discipline, who is investigated, and who might lose both their official hat and their freedom overnight. With these three positions rematched, there is room to readjust the power operation mode of the entire province. On October 18, the presidium of the Anhui Party Congress announced a nine-member standing committee of the presidium, which included Li Lecheng, Wang Dongwei, Zhang Ximing, Sun Hongmei, Xu Yongke, and others. There is an officialdom trick here: the presidium standing committee is not the new provincial party committee's standing committee; it is merely the leadership team responsible for operating this congress. The actual new provincial party committee standing committee must wait until the new provincial party committee is elected and holds its first plenary session to be generated. According to long-standing practices, provincial party secretaries and governors usually have to consider whether they can be nominated for re-election once they reach around 63 years of age. Why? Because ministerial-level cadres generally step down around the age of 65, and a term lasts for five years, meaning the organization always has to leave some leeway in advance. Five years ago during the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region party congress, Shi Taifeng was already 65 and still re-elected; later he entered the Politburo and today sits in the position of Head of the CCP Central Organization Department. Therefore, the most profound learning in officialdom is who can draw a circle for you on the age chart, and who can make you leave right at the age limit.

Look at Henan, where the moves are even bigger. On the afternoon of October 19, the 12th Henan Provincial Party Congress held its preparatory meeting, hosted by Zhou Zuyi. On the 20th, the congress officially opened, with Zhou Zuyi delivering the report and Acting Governor Wang Lujin participating in the congress activities. Zhou Zuyi was originally the party secretary of Fujian, transferred to Henan on September 23. The former Henan party secretary Liu Ning left office, and immediately afterward, former Hebei deputy party secretary Wang Lujin was transferred to Henan, officially taking office as acting governor on the 24th to succeed Wang Kai. Look at this arrangement: the party secretary comes from Fujian, and the governor comes from Hebei. In Henan, a populous province, the top party and government leaders were replaced almost simultaneously, and both were transferred from outside. Zhou Zuyi used to work in the central organization system, served as the director of the State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform, and then headed Fujian. As for Wang Lujin, he worked in the State Administration of Taxation for a long time, later entered the financial discipline inspection system of the National Audit Office and the CCP Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, and then went to Hebei as deputy party secretary. Speaking of this, there is another even more noteworthy figure: Shi Taifeng. Shi Taifeng now manages the Organization Department of the CCP Central Committee. In the CCP cadre system, which provincial party secretary should be rotated, who can be promoted, who has reached retirement age, and who can serve another term—all these matters must go through the central organization procedures. So now, before the 21st National Congress, the provincial leadership teams across the country are being reshuffled. Can old Xi still place his own people wherever he wants just like he did at the 20th National Congress? Furthermore, don't just look at Anhui and Henan, which have just held their congresses; the place where the knife is wielded with the most precision is actually Jiangsu. Jiangsu party secretary Xin Changxing is still sitting in the position of party secretary, looking calm on the surface. However, several important positions around him have changed faces one after another over the past month or so. On September 12, Hu Lijie took office as the head of the provincial organization department. This female cadre born in 1971 worked in Liaoning for a long time, then went to Shanxi to manage organization work before being transferred to Jiangsu. On October 8, Fan Bo took office as the deputy party secretary, and Bian Xuewen took office as a member of the provincial standing committee and secretary of the provincial discipline inspection commission. Coupled with the previously adjusted deputy governors and other positions, several important interfaces of Jiangsu's new leadership team have been arranged in advance. Hu Lijie manages cadre promotions, Bian Xuewen manages discipline investigation issues, and Fan Bo, formerly the party secretary of Suzhou, has now been promoted to deputy party secretary, further entering the core of the province's party affairs coordination. To change a province's power structure, it is not strictly necessary to first drive the provincial party secretary out of office; the secretary can continue to hold meetings, deliver reports, and sit right in the middle of the podium. But when the few people around him managing cadres, discipline, and party affairs are replaced, every important personnel matter in the future must be coordinated with the new leadership team, which brings to mind another place: Fujian. After Zhou Zuyi went to Henan, former Fujian governor Zhao Long took over as party secretary, but he still concurrently serves as governor. The positions of the top two party and government leaders are temporarily held by one person. Even more interesting is that around October 13, the Fujian provincial government adjusted another important position: Zhao Zenglian, born in 1970, entered the provincial standing committee and concurrently serves as the deputy party secretary of the Fujian provincial government, meaning the number two person in this provincial government team. Therefore, the truly interesting part is right here: to whom the chair of the Fujian governor is ultimately assigned will directly determine who Zhao Long forms the next party-government leadership team with after taking charge of the provincial party committee. At the time of the 20th National Congress when he was at his most glorious, Li Qiang, Cai Qi, and Ding Xuexiang sat in the standing committee. This group of people had followed him for many years, and his cronies at various local levels were also promoted step by step. At that time, the last thing he lacked was his own people. This shows at least that the power arrangements in the next officialdom will be far more complicated than simply renewing terms by following the old roster of the Xi faction. But what he has to protect is far more than just Li Qiang; looking at the 31 provincial-level party committees below, along with hundreds or thousands of important cadre positions, such a huge network cannot be guarded for him by just one elderly secretary.

What is even more interesting is that just as the local reshuffling of official positions has begun, Xi Jinping is busy doing something else in Beijing. He has started to bring one of his most touted political achievements from the past fourteen years back to the table, and he intends to make a formal statement on it at the Fifth Plenary Session: anti-corruption. On October 15, Xinhua News Agency released a report stating that the 20th issue of Qiushi magazine, to be published the next day, would carry an important article by Xi titled "Advancing Comprehensive and Strict Party Governance with Higher Standards and More Concrete Measures." The most noteworthy part of this article is the small print at the end. If you turn to the end of the article, you will find that it is not a new speech from October at all, but rather the main part of a speech he gave at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection on January 12 of this year. Looking further back, the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee had already held a meeting on September 21, deciding to submit a "Decision of the CCP Central Committee on Persistently Advancing Comprehensive and Strict Party Governance on Several Major Issues" to the Fifth Plenary Session, which opens on October 26, for deliberation. The official introduction to this decision specifically emphasized one thing: to summarize the achievements and experiences of comprehensive and strict Party governance in the new era. Consider this arrangement: on one hand, the Political Bureau is preparing for the plenary session to summarize the historical achievements of strict Party governance; on the other hand, Qiushi is bringing out that speech from the beginning of the year. The two events, one after the other, form a complete set. As I understand it, this is Xi writing the epilogue to his own political career. Jiang Zemin left behind the "Three Represents," incorporating the idea that private entrepreneurs could join the Party into the CCP's political theoretical system. Hu Jintao left behind the "Scientific Outlook on Development," which became a guiding ideology in the Party Constitution by the 18th National Congress. Now it is Xi's turn. After being the emperor for fourteen years, what exactly has he left behind that future generations will remember? Anti-corruption and comprehensive, strict Party governance—and that is not even counting today. In July 2017, the Legal Daily disclosed, based on data from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection at the time, that since the 18th National Congress, more than 1.14 million Party members and officials at the township and section level and below had been subject to Party disciplinary or administrative sanctions.

A person who once worked within the system shared their personal observations. Having left their former work environment for many years, they looked back and counted their former colleagues, only to find that more than twenty people had been sentenced to prison—some at the section level, some at the division level, and others at even higher levels. Some received light sentences of a few years, while others received heavy sentences of over a decade. Think about it: when a municipal Party secretary gets into trouble, who under them approved projects for them, who arranged land for them, who gave them money back then, and who was promoted by them? As the discipline inspection commission investigates down these connections, a single municipal Party secretary can implicate a string of bureau chiefs, division heads, and business owners. Even more troublesome is that some people may not have engaged in any shady deals with the officials above them, but their official positions were given by that person, and their career paths were arranged by that person. Once their patron falls, they have to prove all over again that they are not grasshoppers on the same string. Therefore, there has been a particularly absurd phenomenon in the CCP officialdom in recent years: in the past, officials feared not being promoted; now, besides fearing not being promoted, they also fear that the person who promoted them might suddenly be arrested. In the past, one often heard that the people could not make a living; in the fourteen years under Xi, a new term has been added to the officialdom: officials cannot make a living. It is not that officials do not know that China's economy is in trouble, nor do they fail to understand that local finances are becoming increasingly difficult. But when it really comes time to make a decision, who dares to do so? If they build a road, will the audit uncover it in the future? If they approve an investment project, will someone say three years later that state assets were lost? If they give a company some preferential treatment, what if the business owner gets into trouble five years later—will they be dragged into it along with the contract? Thus, the safest approach is to do as little as possible. Meetings are held as usual, documents are issued as usual, and expressions of stance are more resolute than the last, but when it comes time to actually sign, they study it first, and after studying, they ask for instructions, and after asking for instructions, it is best to have the higher-ups issue another document. How does corruption come about? It is because officials have unchecked power in their hands. Today, one corrupt official is arrested, and tomorrow another person is sent to sit in the same chair. The approval power is still there, the land is still there, the bank loans are still there, and the supervisory power is still held by the same power system. You have replaced the people, but the soil that breeds corruption has not been replaced. Isn't that ironic? An anti-corruption cause that is said to have achieved historical success has been carried out for fourteen years, and by the Fifth Plenary Session, a special decision still has to be made to tell the whole Party that it must be carried out persistently in the future. What Xi wants most now is to write this into the official documents of the Central Plenary Session and turn it into a political achievement recognized by the whole Party. That way, even if the leader is changed in the future, anyone who wants to negate his line over these years will have to weigh whether they are negating a decision previously made by the Party Central Committee. To put it bluntly, the book of merits is not just for show; he wants to use it as a protective amulet.

There is a problem here, and the more he thinks about it, the more uneasy he likely feels. Back then, he held organizational, personnel, and disciplinary inspection authority in his hands, using the knife against anyone who dared to disobey. But once he is no longer General Secretary, who will wield these powers? If he truly hands over the position of General Secretary, his greatest fear is not that people will move on once he leaves office, but that the teacup will be smashed the moment he steps away. With the anti-corruption campaign arresting so many officials and offending so many people over the years, who can guarantee that no one will settle old scores with him in the future? More importantly, who can guarantee the safety and peace of the Xi family from then on? The version circulating is quite specific: Li Qiang takes over as General Secretary, Ding Xuexiang as Premier, and Old Xi retains his position as Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Some versions even suggest that Li Qiang should first enter the Military Commission to pave the way for a future succession. Li Qiang is a native of Wenzhou, Zhejiang. After the reform and opening up, Wenzhou merchants making leather shoes, electrical appliances, and garments stepped out into the world one after another. Instead of entering the private market, Li Qiang stayed inside the system, rising all the way to Secretary-General of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee. When that person was serving as Party Secretary of Zhejiang, Li Qiang was the Provincial Party Secretary's Secretary-General. What kind of role was that? Every document the Party Secretary read, every person he met, every meeting he attended, which matters needed advance arrangement, and which departments had issues requiring timely coordination—none of this could do without this chief steward. The most important skill for a top leader's head secretary is knowing the second half of a sentence and what needs to be done the moment the leader has spoken only the first half. In 2012, that person entered Beijing, and Li Qiang was soon promoted to Governor of Zhejiang. In 2016, he went to Jiangsu as Provincial Party Secretary, and in 2017, he secured the position of Shanghai Municipal Party Secretary. By the time the controversy over the Shanghai lockdown during the 20th National Congress had not yet subsided, he went straight into the Politburo Standing Committee, ranking second. The following year, skipping the common resume of first serving as Vice Premier, he assumed office directly as Premier of the State Council. Of course, this does not mean he owed everything solely to being a secretary; after all, one cannot manage to be the top official in several major economic provinces without administrative experience. But one thing about his promotion was extremely prominent: at every crucial step, Old Xi's trust carried more weight than any of his other political credentials. In 2015, while serving as Governor of Zhejiang, he proposed that the government should act as a good "shop assistant" for enterprises. These three words had a strong Wenzhou flavor—shop assistants greet guests first when they arrive and quickly solve any trouble they face, rather than putting on official airs and making business owners run their legs off and wear out their mouths. But upon arriving in Beijing as Premier, this shop assistant changed his working environment, and the tone of his speech changed as well. He began to frequently talk about "consolidating the foundation and nourishing the origin." This was not a new term that popped up in the last three days; he had already used it in the 2024 government work report and mentioned it repeatedly in subsequent speeches on economic governance. "Consolidating the foundation and nourishing the origin" is a concept from traditional Chinese medicine: when a patient is weak, you cannot immediately administer strong medicine; you must first nurture the vital energy and slowly rebuild the foundation. Back in Zhejiang, enterprises were guests, and the government was to act as a shop assistant. Now, having arrived at the State Council, the entire Chinese economy has become a patient, and the Premier has changed professions to become an old traditional Chinese medicine doctor. The problem is why the patient's body has become so weak: the pandemic lockdowns tossed things around, the real estate sector ran into trouble, local government finances ran out of money, and the confidence of private enterprises was repeatedly battered. Yet many of the major policies that caused these problems were not matters that Li Qiang as Premier alone could decide. He has to find ways to stabilize the economy while failing to publicly deny the route set by that person; he has to talk about confidence with private enterprises while failing to let people think the State Council is preparing to run a separate set of rules. When the economy is bad, he has to step forward and take the blame; when the political route goes wrong, he cannot say to the big boss's face that the root of the disease lies in the prescription written by your honor. If Li Qiang takes over as General Secretary and Ding Xuexiang as Premier, with Old Xi retaining the position of Military Commission Chairman, it would appear that the three systems of the Party, government, and military still remain tied to his old relationships. Yet Old Xi has only calculated the ledger from his own side. If Hu and Wen on the other side, along with those political forces hoping to restore collective leadership, truly accept Li Qiang as a transitional figure, what are they even aiming for? Could it be that they went through such a massive commotion just to swap Old Xi the General Secretary for Old Xi's secretary, and then let him continue ruling from behind the curtain?

This brings up another succession plan circulating: Hu Chunhua stepping straight into power. Hu Chunhua and Li Qiang represent two very different political backgrounds. Starting his career in the Communist Youth League system and subsequently governing Inner Mongolia and Guangdong, Hu Chunhua has long been regarded by outsiders as a key figure of the Youth League faction. If the person in charge insists that Hu Chunhua cannot succeed directly, and other factions are unwilling to let him continue serving as General Secretary, could they find an interim figure whom all sides can temporarily accept? To Old Xi, he is one of his own; to those hoping to restore collective leadership, Li Qiang has not established a separate personal authority spanning the Party, the government, and the military, nor does he necessarily have the capacity to inherit Xi's one-man-rule system intact. In other words, the very trait that once made Li Qiang most reassuring to Old Xi might also be the reason why other political forces are willing to accept him. As long as he remained Premier with someone above him, any major political line failures could be blamed on his primary focus being government work; but once he sits in the General Secretary chair, there is no one left to shield him. If the economy fails, local governments disobey, and officials continue lying flat, the ultimate blame will fall on the new General Secretary. Moreover, if he were to come to power through a compromise among various factions, his power as General Secretary could not rely solely on Old Xi's promotion. He would have to coordinate with other members of the Standing Committee, coordinate with the organizational system, secure the cooperation of provincial Party secretaries, and persuade officials who do not belong to the Xi faction to work for him. Xi thought that by promoting Li Qiang, Li Qiang would forever owe him this debt, but there is a most pragmatic rule in officialdom: you can be promoted by one person, but you cannot guarantee that once you reach the top, you can secure your position relying on that single person alone. Right at this critical juncture, a rather intriguing small incident occurred. A WeChat official account in Shandong called Mouding Research Information and Economic Think Tank reposted an article discussing opposition to the cult of personality a few days ago. Friends, Item 6, Section 10 of the CCP Constitution explicitly states that the Party prohibits any form of the cult of personality. If you look for this article now, it is no longer visible. Whether the author withdrew it themselves or the platform handled it, there is still no reliable answer. If Li Qiang really succeeds, will he continue to be Old Xi's puppet, or will he follow the path of collective leadership and redistribute the power previously concentrated in a single pair of hands? Therefore, Old Xi's attempt to use Li Qiang to protect his political legacy may not be as cheap a bargain as he imagined.

However, the person in charge has likely considered this angle as well, which is why in several succession versions circulating overseas, he still clings tightly to one thing and refuses to hand it over: the Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Speaking of Li Qiang constantly chanting about strengthening the foundation and cultivating vitality, we ordinary people stare at screens all day watching the political situation and worrying about worldly affairs, straining our eyes and exhausting our bodies—that is when we truly need to strengthen our foundation and restore our vitality. At this time, taking a capsule of WiseQuest Black Herbal Paste Concentrated Capsules, made from pure natural herbal extracts, helps nourish the body and sustain daily energy. When your eyes are tired from staring at your phone, applying a WiseQuest Eye Cooling Compress Patch provides cool relief for a relaxing eye spa. Jiangfeng Youpin is now offering a special Thanksgiving super-value event: buy three bottles of the Black Herbal Paste Concentrated Capsules and get a box of German vitamins free, buy two bottles and get rich Italian coffee free, and for the Eye Cooling Compress Patches, buy five boxes and get one box directly free. Please support Jiangfeng by clicking the link below or scanning the QR code on the screen to make a purchase. Once we have restored our energy, let us return to this major game in Zhongnanhai and look at the final trump card that person is desperately guarding.

Speaking of the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, the calculation behind that position is not entirely without historical basis. There is an old saying in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Back then, Deng Xiaoping was neither the General Secretary nor the President, yet by virtue of his position as Chairman of the Central Military Commission, he could still determine the retention or removal of the highest-level personnel in the CCP. In 2002, Jiang Zemin handed over the position of General Secretary to Hu Jintao, but he remained Chairman of the Military Commission for another two years, only handing over the Party's Military Commission chairmanship in 2004, with the state's Military Commission chairmanship following a few months later. However, he only learned to sit in the chair that Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin once occupied, while forgetting what they relied on to sit firmly in those seats. Deng Xiaoping was someone who had fought in wars, commanded troops, and returned to the center of power after being purged multiple times. Many old generals in the military had walked through the war years with him; even without being General Secretary, he still had people who respected his authority based on his decades of accumulated political seniority and connections within the military. Jiang Zemin's situation was different; when he handed over power, the top level of the military had not experienced a life-and-death large-scale internal struggle, nor had the party appeared in the current situation of successive investigations into high-level Military Commission officials. Hu Jintao taking over as General Secretary while Jiang Zemin continued as Chairman of the Military Commission was a phased handover formed under the power arrangements of that time. But what kind of military is "that person" facing today? On July 10, 2017, the Xinhua News Agency published a long report titled "Leading the People's Army Toward a World-Class Military." The entire article was a eulogy to "that person's" achievements in strengthening the military, but one sentence in it carries extra weight when looked at today: "Since the 18th National Congress, more than 100 officers at or above the corps level have been investigated for suspected serious violations of discipline and law throughout the military." In February of this year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in the United States released a database specifically tracking the purge of high-ranking generals in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). From 2022 to February 20 of this year, 101 officers at the general or lieutenant general level have been formally dealt with or listed as suspected of being purged due to their long-term disappearance from public activities. These 101 people are not all confirmed to have fallen from power, and the military ranks and timeframes are different from the 2017 Xinhua statistic of over 100 people, so the two numbers cannot be simply added together. There were 47 generals in office in 2022, plus those promoted since then; by February of this year, 41 of them had already been formally purged or listed as suspected of being purged. Just think, this is not a case of a military region commander getting into trouble, nor is it a case of an equipment department head being corrupt; this is the entire group of high-ranking generals experiencing an extremely violent shock in just a few short years. Since the founding of the CCP, when was the military purged most severely? The Mao Zedong era, especially the Cultural Revolution, was a period of political persecution; even founding marshals like Peng Dehuai and He Long could not escape. The military disasters of that era cannot be compared simply by using today's anti-corruption figures. But since the reform and opening up, especially during the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras, can you recall how many vice chairmen of the Military Commission, members of the Military Commission, or theater-level commanders got into trouble one after another in just a few short years? However, it cannot be said that all these generals in the military were purged by Xi personally; the struggles within the Military Commission in recent years are far from that simple. Behind these purges, how much is a counterattack from the Zhang-Liu faction and how much is Xi's own deployment? Public information cannot yet clarify every order and every factional relationship.

On January 24 of this year, the Ministry of National Defense officially announced that Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, Chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, were placed under investigation. With both men falling at the same time, the shock to the top military command is far beyond what could be compared to replacing one or two department heads. The most troublesome consequence of this internal power struggle is that it has shattered the existing trust within the military. You might ask, what is most important for an officer following a superior? Of course, it is obeying orders, but beyond that, they must believe that this superior can lead them forward, and believe that by following orders today, they won't suddenly be accused of standing on the wrong side tomorrow. How would those who worked under Zhang Youxia feel when they see him fall? And how would those who followed He Weidong and Miao Hua feel when they see them fall one after another? Therefore, even if Xi Jinping manages to handle Zhang and Liu through organizational procedures in this internal military power struggle, it does not mean he can inherit the military connections and political prestige that Zhang and Liu originally held. Of course, the Chairman of the Central Military Commission is not an empty title. According to the current system of the CCP, the Central Military Commission implements a chairman responsibility system. The chairman inherently possesses real military leadership power; it cannot be said that if the General Secretary changes, the former Military Commission Chairman automatically becomes a commander without troops the next day. If the Military Commission Chairman still holds complete military power, while Li Qiang, the new General Secretary, can only manage daily party affairs, then how much substance is left in the so-called restoration of collective leadership? Therefore, if there really is a transition plan involving Li Qiang, how the power of the Military Commission Chairman is arranged becomes an unavoidable hurdle. If the former Military Commission Chairman is to remain in his seat, how can those in the military who worry about their political safety believe that another round of purges won't happen later? That person wants to keep the Military Commission Chairman position, but if this Military Commission Chairman can still launch political purges at any time and change the highest power arrangements, then what guarantee do other political forces have in accepting a Li Qiang transition? Conversely, if the handover agreement makes new arrangements for major personnel changes in the Military Commission, military disciplinary investigations, and the coordination of power between the Party Central Committee and the Military Commission, so that the highest power is no longer decided by Xi alone, then the Military Commission Chairman position he leaves behind is no longer the same chair that once held absolute authority. You see, what bargain is there left to strike? The Fifth Plenary Session is about to be held. Let us continue to keep an eye on these chairs to see who ends up sitting in them, and who no longer even has the qualification to stand by the side. Alright, that is all for today's chat with friends. Don't forget to like and subscribe to Jiang Feng's channel, and please share it with more friends. Thank you for watching, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.