3 days before takeoff, Wen Jiabao seals Xi Jinping's retreat; Hu Chunhua appears at 4 events in 8 days, forcing a showdown before the Fifth Plenary Session; Shenzhen's new mayor jumps ship to the veteran faction in public [Jiang Feng Horizon 20260921 Episode 493]

This episode analyzes the violent tremors in the power structure of the CCP's top leadership in mid-September 2026. The video points out that on the eve of Xi Jinping's trip to the U.S. to sign a China-U.S. economic and trade agreement, Wen Jiabao and the group of party elders completely sealed off his retreat through personnel arrangements and by upgrading Li Chenggang's status as a negotiator. Meanwhile, Hu Chunhua has made frequent high-profile public appearances, personnel adjustments have been dense across multiple provinces, and the new mayor of Shenzhen publicly omitted the "Two Upholds," indicating that the elder faction and the Hu-Wen forces are comprehensively seizing power ahead of the Fifth Plenary Session.

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Hello friends, welcome to Jiang Feng Vision. What has been the craziest rumor on the entire internet over the past week? On September 13th, his special plane flew back to Beijing from New Delhi, and the next day overseas social media exploded, claiming that as soon as he stepped off the gangway, he was taken by ambulance directly to 301 Hospital. The next day, it was said he had a sudden massive heart attack and was not doing well; the day after that, he had passed away; and then the CCP Central Office was secretly drafting an obituary. By Saturday, someone even posted a printed copy of a eulogy leaked from a mysterious dinner party in the capital on an overseas forum, with the birth and death dates clearly written as 1953 to 2026.

Just as the entire internet was hyping that he had entered 301 Hospital and was preparing to issue an obituary, on September 19th, U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent flew directly from Washington to New York according to the original schedule. At 10:30 AM on the 20th, in the top-floor secret room of the JPMorgan Chase headquarters in Manhattan, where even mobile phone signals were physically blocked, Bessent sat down with He Lifeng, Vice Premier of the State Council of the CCP, for closed-door negotiations. They talked all the way until the 23rd, the day Xi's special plane was supposed to land. If the head of that major power across the ocean were really hooked up to tubes in 301 Hospital these past few days, would the White House's economic chief be spending five days and five nights behind closed doors in Manhattan, New York, haggling over treaty details with a regime team that was about to be discarded? Absolutely not. So, Xi is still alive, but this by no means indicates that Xi is still calm and composed. He returned to Beijing on the 13th, yet by the 20th, not a single live shot of him could be found on Xinhua News Agency; the headlines were all filled with congratulatory letters and instructions. But in that same week, Hu Chunhua appeared on camera four times. At the event in Qingdao on the 17th, with dignitaries from 60 countries sitting in the audience, it was Hu Chunhua who took the stage to speak on behalf of the Chinese side. And this is just what was on camera; in the 72 hours before the special plane taxied onto the runway, a quiet palace coup had already completed a political chokehold on him through official seals, titles, and cadre transfer orders.

When the agreement in the East Room of the White House was pushed in front of Xi Jinping on September 24th, the only thing he could do was sign it. Not a single ton of soybeans could be reduced, and not a single year of rare earth exemptions could be moved, because this document was not negotiated by his people at all, and it had already been finalized before his private jet even landed. But Trump, with his temperament, loves to use maximum pressure at the negotiating table. He would suddenly lean forward, slap his thigh, and say, 'Old Xi, my old friend, I'll give you another five points off the fentanyl tariff if you buy another 20 million tons of soybeans on the spot and open up the export approvals for that batch of critical rare earths today. How about we walk out right now and announce the deal to the cameras of the world?' If it were five years ago, when he was the one-man supreme leader, he might have nodded and made the decision without blinking. But today, does he dare to nod? He dares, but he cannot. Why? Because before the wheels of his private jet left the ground, the retreat path from this negotiating table had already been welded shut with two steel nails by people behind him.

The first nail is time. Vice Premier He Lifeng led a delegation to the United States for consultations from September 19th to 23rd. According to the schedule released by the White House, Xi's private jet did not land at Joint Base Andrews until the 23rd, and the negotiation dates were set until the 23rd. By the time he landed, the terms, attachments, and lists were all bound and sealed. He flew over to sign, and he had to sign exactly what Li Chenggang had negotiated in New York. This scene played out once last year; in October 2025 in Busan, he went to meet Trump. Cai Qi, He Lifeng, and Wang Yi were all on the accompanying list, but Li Chenggang was the only one missing. Overseas independent media said at the time that he didn't bring the negotiator because he didn't want to sign that agreement. A year later, he didn't need to bring Li Chenggang; the man had already sat at the table in New York four days in advance.

The second nail is status. Three days before Xi took off on September 20th, the State Council released a list of appointments and removals of state officials, and Li Chenggang became the trade negotiation representative. We must look closely: Li Chenggang had been sitting in that seat since April 2025. On September 20th, what changed in the State Council gazette was his original official title; Li Chenggang went from being the Ministry of Commerce's international trade negotiation representative to the People's Republic of China's international trade negotiation representative. If he were just the Ministry of Commerce's negotiation representative, even if he had signed with the Americans in New York, Xi could have flown to Washington, slammed the table, and said, 'This was negotiated by subordinates under the Ministry of Commerce; I, as the President, did not nod. Send it back and redo it.' In diplomacy, this is called an administrative reservation, leaving a seam for backtracking. But once it is prefixed with 'People's Republic of China,' this person is representing the highest sovereignty of this country, and the bottom line he negotiates is the legal boundary of national sovereignty. When the head of state flies over, all that is left is to put pen to paper. In international law and internal Party rules, that is called implementation, not decision-making. All of his discretionary power has been welded shut by those elders behind him.

Some might say that Li Chenggang is just an executor, and whatever he manages to negotiate is ultimately the will of Old Xi anyway. So let's look at a live performance that is utterly unprecedented in the history of US-China diplomacy over the past four decades, and you will understand that this Li Chenggang is no ordinary figure. On October 15, 2025, in New York, at the Invest in America Forum hosted by CNBC, US Treasury Secretary Bessent gritted his teeth and called out Li Chenggang by name in front of hundreds of international financial magnates. He stated that this individual uninvitedly and arbitrarily rushed to Washington from August 27 to 29, 2025, forcefully demanding a high-level closed-door meeting with the US side. Bessent unhesitatingly criticized him for his crude and impolite behavior and for making inflammatory remarks. Bloomberg reported that Li Chenggang once dropped a statement across the negotiating table in Washington: once the US 301 port fees on China's shipbuilding industry are passed, the Chinese side will not hesitate to cause global supply chain chaos. Some friends hearing this might start to wonder: isn't that remark a standard Wolf Warrior statement? Aren't Wolf Warriors all people belonging to Old Xi? At this point, we need to take a look at what the attitude of the CCP veterans actually is toward the United States. Their stance has never been about refusing to make concessions, but rather that concessions can be made as long as they don't go too far. Dispatching someone who has spent decades haggling over legal clauses to sit up there is precisely to guard that line—give what should be given, but not a single tonnage is allowed to be yielded past the line. That is why Li Chenggang dared to be so discourteous in Washington; it was the line behind him that forbade him from backing down. What makes it even more thought-provoking is Bessent's remark about him coming uninvited: would a mere clerk who obeys orders from a single phone call in Zhongnanhai dare to book his own plane ticket, decide on his own to fly to Washington, and slam the table to force the US Treasury Secretary into a meeting? How many heads does he think he has? According to Old Xi's rules over the past decade or so, an official who bungled diplomacy and allowed opponents to humiliate him in front of the whole world should have had his official uniform stripped and been placed under formal investigation upon returning home. Yet after returning home, Li Chenggang was indeed... on October 20 of last year, his posts as Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization and Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Office at Geneva were relieved. Those in the know laughed; this was cutting off all his overseas concurrent posts to exclusively lock horns on US-China negotiations.

He Lifeng indeed sat in the main seat at that long table at JPMorgan Chase, but just look at how the high wall behind him—one he had leaned on for decades—was smashed to pieces throughout this entire year. In April 2026, the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection suddenly popped up with a notice: Wu Hao, Director of the Science and Technology Innovation Development Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was suspected of serious violations of discipline and law and was undergoing investigation. Wu Hao's previous position was Secretary-General of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), and the NDRC was the political base that He Lifeng had cultivated for a full ten years. On August 14, Cheng Xiaobo, Executive Vice Governor of Gansu Province, voluntarily surrendered; he started out as Deputy Secretary-General of the NDRC and had audited the accounts for He Lifeng for many years. Both of these men were chief internal stewards who managed the accounts and all the unspeakable materials for the top boss, and both fell from grace. What kind of cold sweat was beading down the spine of the master sitting in the main seat? After meeting with the Foreign Minister of Chile on August 19, He Lifeng himself vanished from state media for a full twenty days, not reappearing until a State Council meeting on September 8. Two days later, he stepped on the gas and drove straight to Tianjin to deliver a message at Wen Jiabao's ancestral home. We have talked about both of these incidents, so you must understand clearly: his ability to sit at that long table at JPMorgan Chase in New York was because he was put back to work after being interrogated and placed under observation for those twenty days—it does not mean he has cleared the hurdle.

So how did Li Chenggang make his way to this US-China negotiating table? On April 16 of last year, Beijing suddenly issued a dismissal order, removing Wang Shouwen, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce's International Trade Representative, and Li Chenggang took office. Overseas independent media immediately exposed the background of the removed Wang Shouwen: Wang Shouwen originated from the Foreign Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce and was a veteran who had been rocketed to promotion during the years when Bo Xilai ruled the Ministry of Commerce. Besides, that was at a critical juncture of flying bullets, when tariff figures on both sides changed from day to day—adding 50 percent today and 100 percent tomorrow. To kick a major general out of his premier seat and into the cold palace was equivalent to directly telling the Americans across the table that there had been major internal changes within the CCP. What is Li Chenggang's background? In short: he entered the Treaty and Law Department of the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade in 1989, and was sent abroad in 2021 to Geneva as China's Permanent Representative to the WTO. During the intervening 32 years, he left the Foreign Economic Relations and Trade building only once, when he was sent to Qingdao for a one-year temporary posting in 2013. For 32 years, he did only one thing: anti-dumping and fair trade in the Treaty and Law Department, haggling over legal clauses with foreigners and fighting international lawsuits. If you flip through this personnel file from the first page to the last, you will see what is missing inside: no Fujian, no Zhejiang, no Shanghai. He probably doesn't even know which way the gates of the NDRC open.

So who is the patriarch of this team under Li Chenggang? When he entered the ministry in 1989, the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade was headed by the Iron Lady Wu Yi. When China squeezed into the World Trade Organization in 2001, Zhu Rongji had this group of people from the Department of Treaty and Law, who used French and English to grind out treaties with the Americans. After WTO entry, it was also these people who fought trade lawsuits with the West. They were the last batch of pure technocrats left behind by Zhu Rongji, Hu Jintao, and Wen Jiabao, and Li Chenggang was an outstanding figure among them. Overseas leaks revealed last year that the first round of China-US negotiations was held in Switzerland and the second in London; the focus was not that He Lifeng went, but that Li Chenggang went as well. Li Chenggang is by no means Xi Jinping's man; he is a cadre left over from the Hu-Wen era. By the Paris negotiations in March this year, rumors surfaced once again that Li Chenggang is Wen Jiabao's man. If Xi Jinping truly had supreme authority and absolute power, Li Chenggang wouldn't even be able to get a boarding pass to Paris. Turning back to look at He Lifeng's background: in 1985, when Xi Jinping was vice mayor of Xiamen, He Lifeng was the deputy director of the Xiamen Municipal Party Committee Office who helped carry bags and arrange cars as a loyal vassal, followed by a career path all the way through the Fujian Development and Reform Commission. Li Chenggang has never touched the Development and Reform Commission for a single day in his life, nor has he ever entered the Fujian clique. Therefore, Li Chenggang and He Lifeng are fundamentally not of the same faction.

The most horrifying talisman was completely unveiled a few days ago when someone overseas leaked a hardline order given by Wen Jiabao to Wang Yi and the negotiation team. The original words were piercing: any commitments Xi Jinping wants to make must first be approved by that decision-making body, and he can no longer throw money around as he did in the past. This decision-making body was secretly established in Zhongnanhai in June 2025, riding above the Politburo Standing Committee, and is named the Decision-Making and Deliberation Coordination Institution. It seems that these veteran cadres not only welded shut Xi Jinping's discretionary power with Li Chenggang—who has spent decades dissecting legal articles—but also added another lock on Wang Yi's diplomatic team. However, what makes Xi Jinping the most uneasy as he is about to board that special plane flying to Washington is not even this matter, because every time he flies away from Beijing, a few fatal personnel transfer orders immediately descend upon the Forbidden City behind him. Staring at this ever-changing world day after day drains one's physical and mental energy first; if your constitution fails you, what will you use to witness the great changes when they arrive?

From September 11 to 12, just after he flew to New Delhi, Beijing issued five major personnel orders in a mere 48 hours. As we have discussed in the past, this time let's just look at the undercurrents during the short seven days after he returned to Beijing in disgrace from New Delhi on September 13. On September 18, the Central Committee approved Dan Xiangqian as Deputy Secretary of the Anhui Provincial Party Committee. On the same day, Zhang Wenbing was swiftly plucked from his position as Executive Vice Governor of Hubei and transferred to the Standing Committee of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee. Also on the same day, the Yunnan Provincial People's Congress appointed Chen Chunping as Executive Vice Governor; this person had just entered the Yunnan Standing Committee at the end of August, his chair was barely warm for less than a month, and he directly took a massive leap forward. On September 20, that Sunday which was originally designated as a workday for adjusted rest, Li Jiuhong officially took office as a member of the Standing Committee of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee. Within three days, four key leadership positions at or above the provincial standing committee level—if you go and check the political résumés of these four individuals, those overseas who are well-versed in the factional networks of the Chinese Communist Party can see right through the bottom cards at a single glance. Former subordinates of Wang Yang, former subordinates of Xiao Jie, and former subordinates of Li Keqiang and Wen Jiabao; from start to finish, not a single Fujian clique member, not a single Zhijiang New Army member. Among these four provinces, Jiangsu is the territory where Li Qiang first served as a provincial chief; the Yunnan border stronghold has always been a treacherous place where various warlord factions are deeply intertwined; and Shaanxi goes without saying—that is the graveyard of Xi Jinping's father and a family monopoly managed by his own younger brother for decades.

But this is just the drizzle before the storm; the real kill order that plunged a bayonet directly into the heart of Xi Jinping's family appeared on that make-up workday Sunday. On September 20, the Shenzhen Municipal People's Congress held a plenary session. In a somber atmosphere, over 400 representatives voted by a show of hands, and Li Yun was officially elected Mayor of Shenzhen. Li Yun is a technocrat who started in finance, holding a Ph.D. in Monetary Banking from Wuhan University, born in 1973. He climbed the ranks through the Agricultural Bank of China and the China Construction Bank, only being parachuted into Guangdong as Vice Governor in 2025. Before he could even settle into his seat, he was shoved into Shenzhen to take direct control of the Special Economic Zone government. For the past decade or so, the assets and hidden shares of Xi Jinping's younger brother, elder sister, and brother-in-law have been rooted in this southern land. Ever since Shi Taifeng took charge of the Organization Department of the CCP Central Committee last year and the Council of Elders reclaimed the power of cadre appointment and removal, the outside world has been watching how the elders would clean up the Guangdong turf. On that day, the front page of the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily prominently featured the inauguration statements of the two top officials, printed on the same page. Dai Yunlong, Director of the Standing Committee of the Shenzhen Municipal People's Congress and a local Guangdong financial steward, said: 'Firmly support the Two Establishes, and resolutely achieve the Two Maintenances.' These two phrases are the standard script for CCP officials to pledge loyalty to Xi Jinping and protect their own official positions; not a single word can be omitted. However, the newly elected mayor, Li Yun, said: 'Deeply comprehend the Two Establishes.' As for the subsequent 'Two Maintenances,' the new mayor actually swallowed them whole in front of hundreds of representatives on the front-page headline of the special zone's party newspaper. In the CCP's political discourse system, publicly castrating the 'Two Maintenances' is a declaration to the entire party that one respects the rules of the Central Committee, but will absolutely no longer maintain the personal authority of Xi Jinping. In the precise and cruel meat grinder that is the Communist Party, could there be such a slip of the tongue in a mayor's public inauguration speech? Could there be such a typo? Impossible. On the eve of the upcoming Fifth Plenary Session, at the doorstep of Xi Jinping's family stronghold, the top leader of the Shenzhen municipal government has already jumped ship and broken ties in public. The southern family defense line of Xi Jinping has been torn open with a bottomless, bleeding wound.

Let's look at a schedule comparison table: one is Hu Chunhua, who has been sitting in the political cold palace of the CPPCC for nearly four years, and the other is Xi Jinping, who has returned from his disappearance. First, look at Hu Chunhua. On September 11, Wang Huning met with the Speaker of the National Assembly of Angola at the Great Hall of the People. The final sentence of the Xinhua News Agency press release stated that Vice Chairman of the CPPCC National Committee Hu Chunhua and others attended the event. That evening, CCTV cameras swept over Hu Chunhua, who sat with a stern expression in the first seat to the right of Wang Huning. From September 13 to 16, Hu Chunhua led a high-level CPPCC inspection delegation straight to Shandong, sweeping through the Yantai-Weihai line without pause. On September 17, the Qingdao 2026 Ocean Cooperation Development Forum opened, with nearly 700 dignitaries and foreign guests from 60 countries around the world in attendance. The person who walked onto the conference stage on behalf of the Chinese side to deliver the keynote speech was none other than Hu Chunhua. The extremely weighty phrase in the official press release was: 'The Chinese side is willing to work with all parties...' This phrase is usually spoken by Xi Jinping. When a Vice Premier of the State Council takes the stage, they represent the country; when a Vice Chairman of the CPPCC takes the stage, according to the rules, they should say 'The National CPPCC is willing to work with all parties,' representing the CPPCC institution, not China. On September 17 in Qingdao, Hu Chunhua started with 'The Chinese side.' The press release was issued by Xinhua News Agency and reviewed word by word. This means that the person standing in front of 60 countries that day speaking for this country was someone who hadn't touched a national microphone in four years. Who handed him this microphone? On September 18, the CPPCC National Committee held a remote consultation meeting, presided over by Wang Huning himself, and Hu Chunhua firmly held the top spot in the ranking of vice chairmen. Within eight days, Hu Chunhua made four high-profile appearances. It is not unusual for a CPPCC Vice Chairman to participate in official activities, but two of these four events involved representing the country and interacting with foreigners. If you extrapolate this frequency, at this pace, that would be a full 16 events in a month. In the past entire year, Hu Chunhua appeared on the Xinwen Lianbo (News Broadcast) only 23 times, and most of those were fleeting shots during collective CPPCC meetings. A 'deposed crown prince' who was considered to have had his political life completely ended, appearing only 23 times a year in the cold palace, is now heading toward 16 appearances in a month. In CCP political terminology, this is called a full-party visual warm-up before a political comeback.

Looking at the other end of the same period, from the time Old Xi returned to Beijing from New Delhi on September 13th until September 20th, a full seven days and seven nights, there was no footage of him meeting any foreign guests. The news headlines regarding his attendance at any substantive official business were dominated by a speech he gave four months ago, published in Qiushi magazine on the 15th, a congratulatory letter sent to Jilin University on the 16th, and a written instruction on national advanced manufacturing work on the 18th. Who the CCP's spotlight is facing and who it is turning its back on is seen clearly by the hundreds of Central Committee members with voting rights sitting in front of their televisions at 7:00 every night across China. A living person with no camera time for seven days, while a discarded official grabs four high-profile spots in eight days—this is called political order. It is necessary to let the Central Committee members, who will be raising their hands to vote at the Fifth Plenary Session in October, see Hu Chunhua's face on the TV screen every day, so that when the vote comes at the Fifth Plenary Session, the position can be handed to him in a justified manner without causing an uproar in the audience.

After looking at the seating arrangements above, let's look at the knife-wielding below. On September 20th, that same black Sunday, the discipline inspection system issued two heavy-hitting announcements late at night. The first was that Zheng Yuliang, former member of the Standing Committee of the Jinhua Municipal Party Committee and former Vice Mayor of Zhejiang Province, had voluntarily surrendered; the second was that Guo Zhong, former director of the Education, Science, Culture and Health Committee of the Hubei Provincial People's Congress, had been expelled from the Party and transferred to the judiciary. These two individuals are not high-ranking, but those in the know understand that when the CCP investigates major cases, it always starts by trimming the edges. Zheng Yuliang started in Jinhua, which is the core interest chain of Li Qiang's hometown in Zhejiang; Guo Zhong cultivated his base in Hubei for a long time, and was a confidant protected and promoted by Li Hongzhong during his tenure in Hubei. Voluntary surrender indicates that the outer defense line has completely collapsed and they know the situation is hopeless; investigating cases after retirement shows that the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection intends to root them out completely. Looking at the timeline, see how the knife of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection is chopping down. In 2025, it moved against high-ranking officials: Ma Xingrui and Chen Weijun in Xinjiang, Wang Lixia in Inner Mongolia, and Fang Hongwei in Xi'an, investigating all the way up to Liu Jianchao. By this spring, the blade cut down a layer, with Fei Gaoyun, Secretary of the Hefei Municipal Party Committee, falling—a top leader of a provincial capital city. By this month, the blade has chopped down to the vice mayor of a prefecture-level city and a retired old director of the provincial People's Congress. When the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection starts cleaning up retired vice mayors, it means that the cases against those high-ranking 'tigers' have already been finalized, and the downfall of these small pawns is just the final cleanup. Don't think that holding onto the memorial tablet of Old Xi's faction until retirement will keep you safe; not a single person on the liquidation list will be spared. The signal sent from the top is that the provincial leadership changes at the end of the year have already been finalized by the decision-making body of Hu and Wen this month.

So what are the rest of Old Xi's cronies who haven't been arrested doing? Look at the press release of Li Hongzhong's research trip in Liaoning, look at the speech of Chen Min'er meeting foreign guests in Tianjin. The two of them used to shout about the 'Core' at the top of their lungs, yet in recent press releases, they have quietly removed the 'Two Upholds.' The lackeys below have noses sharper than dogs; they tilt their necks whichever way the wind blows.

On September 23rd, the special plane will land in Washington. The ceremonial cannons on the South Lawn of the White House will fire as usual, the toasts at the East Room state dinner will be drunk as usual, and the photos on the front pages of media worldwide will still show Old Xi standing in the center of the spotlight. But the framework of that agreement was locked in by Li Chenggang, who led Wu Yi's former WTO team from Geneva to New York for a full year and four months of negotiations. Three days before takeoff, his representative status was forcibly elevated from a ministry to that of a sovereign state, welding shut any possibility for Old Xi to refuse to sign or go back on his word. And whether he can adapt to Trump at the long table in the White House depends on that cold, secret order from Beijing's decision-making body. Why must this trip be made? It was written on July 30th. That day, the Politburo announced that the Fifth Plenary Session would be held in October. Overseas media said this timetable was set by the elders: visit the US in September to ease US-China relations, and return to hand over power at the plenary session. Last year in October, the same group of people said that it is most appropriate for him to sign the treaty under the city walls; he created this, so he must clean it up. Outside the camera lens, the chessboard of Zhongnanhai has long since changed beyond recognition. The photo is his, the words are Wen Jiabao's, the seat is Hu Chunhua's, and the seal behind it is Hu Jintao's. He is going to Washington to sign a humiliating treaty of surrender in his own name on behalf of his political rivals. When he returns to Beijing, he will walk into a trial venue where the seats have already been arranged and the files have been sharpened by others. The chains of the dungeon have already been locked; the roar of the special plane is nothing but the funeral music for a mere formality. The pen he holds does not sign peace between China and the US, but the full stop to his own political life. Alright, that's all for this episode.

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