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Xi Jinping Forced to Write Down 'Lifetime Accountability'! 58 High-Level Opinions and 14 Groups Arguing at the Fifth Plenary Session, Standing Committee Forces 13 Revisions! Ding Xuexiang Kicked Out of the Core Drafting Group, While Xi's Three Key Confidants Wang Huning, Cai Qi, and Li Xi Turn Around and Set Retirement Rules for Him! [Jiang Feng Vision 20261103 Episode 530]

1# · OP Author：江峰·視界 Published：2026-11-03 11:30 Replies：0 Views：27 Permalink：fanzei.net/d_ufdmtf

This episode reviews the behind-the-scenes high-level political maneuvering around the Fifth Plenary Session in late October 2026. From the establishment of the drafting group in January to the Jingxi Hotel meeting in late October, facing 58 sets of elder opinions and fierce arguments among 14 working groups, Xi Jinping's power suffered a severe blow. The deputy heads of the drafting group, led by Wang Huning, Cai Qi, and Li Xi, compromised at the last minute, writing provisions such as the term limit system, the principle of moving officials up and down, and lifetime accountability for major decisions into the resolution, while also deleting the core buzzword and the phrase "the entire military" from the end of the communique. The episode analyzes the shifts in the power structure and the profound implications behind this backroom showdown.

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Hello friends, and welcome to Jiang Feng Horizon. In late October in Beijing, the cold wind blowing down from Xishan blew straight into the Jingxi Hotel. The Fifth Plenary Session, which had just concluded, was marked by thunderous applause on the surface, but privately it was a face-to-face table-flipping showdown. On the afternoon of October 29, the communique of the plenary session was delayed by a full forty minutes compared to previous years before being released. Once people got their hands on it and compared the details, those in the know were completely stunned. At the very top, the absolute authority held for ten years had that core phrase crossed out in red ink right in front of everyone at the end of the communique; the character commanding the entire Party and military was gone, and even the phrase "the entire military" was wiped completely clean. But this was only the embarrassment put on display; what truly drew blood was the second half of the night of October 28. The doors of the Standing Committee meeting room were double-locked, and the seven men sat around the long table until the early morning hours, as 58 feedback opinions stamped with confidentiality seals poured into the General Office of the Central Committee like snowflakes. This time, Xinhua News Agency explicitly named names for the first time, including retired veteran comrades, and in the 14 specially dispersed small group meeting rooms, tables were being pounded in every single room. What was even more fatal was that the ones who turned against him at the very last minute were precisely the three closest confidants around Old Xi: the three deputy heads of the document drafting group—Wang Huning, Cai Qi, and Li Xi. A pen, a door, a knife—these three close aides, who were usually inseparable, saw that the tide had turned. In order to leave themselves a life-saving ticket to jump ship and protect themselves, they forcefully stuffed provisions into the supreme decision of the Fifth Plenary Session overnight: implementing the leadership tenure system, timely reshuffling of officials who were incompetent for their current positions, and that fatal lifetime accountability system for major decisions. How did a document that personally ordered the punishment of others in January turn into a death trap tightened around one's own neck by October? What harsh words did those retired veteran comrades in Beidaihe write on the official documents? How did Cai Qi and Wang Huning force the figure at the very top to swallow this revised draft in the second half of the night on October 28? Today, following the official ledger handed over by Xinhua News Agency itself, let us push open the heavy red wooden doors of Zhongnanhai and see just how perilous this backroom drama truly was.

Turning the calendar back to January 2026, which was the coldest month in Beijing, the 'Birth Chronicle' (Danshengji) laid its cards on the table right from the start. In January of this year, the Politburo Standing Committee and the Politburo held successive meetings, deciding to establish a drafting group for the Fifth Plenary Session documents. Xi Jinping personally took charge as the group leader, setting the theme of the plenary session as 'persistently advancing comprehensive and strict Party governance.' Xinhua News Agency even specifically quoted a remark Xi made at the time, calling it 'very necessary and timely.' Listen to 'timely'—which moment exactly was he referring to? Just look at the Central Military Commission compound in January, and it all becomes clear. On January 20, the seminar for major provincial and ministerial-level officials had just begun. Only four days later, on January 24, the Ministry of National Defense suddenly dropped a bombshell, officially announcing that Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Zhang Youxia and Chief of the Joint Staff Department Liu Zhenli were under investigation for suspected serious violations of discipline and law. Having just drawn blood in the August First Building in January, he set the agenda for the October plenary session in Zhongnanhai that same month. Xi's calculations were precise; he wanted to lock the more than 200 Central Committee members in the Jingxi Hotel in October, have them listen to his 'tightening headband' spell, and then have them unanimously raise their hands to retroactively approve his purge of Zhang Youxia in the military as the highest resolution of the entire Party. To collect this 'pledge of allegiance,' Xi moved with lethal speed. Only a week after Zhang Youxia's downfall was officially announced, on January 31, the red-headed document from the CCP Central Committee was sent across the country, ostensibly to solicit opinions on the agenda for the Fifth Plenary Session. The 'Birth Chronicle' listed the recipients clearly: in addition to various provinces, cities, and central ministries, it specifically listed a separate line for the Party committees of all PLA units and the People's Armed Police Force.

In early February, in the Party committee conference room of a northern group army, the wind howled outside the window. No matter how high the heating was turned up, the seven or eight generals and field officers sitting on both sides of the long table were sweating cold sweat on their backs. Just half a month ago, these people were still holding Vice Chairman Zhang's speeches on military governance. In the blink of an eye, their old chief was in prison, and the red-headed document from the General Office of the CCP Central Committee was slapped on the table, demanding they provide opinions on 'comprehensive and strict Party governance.' Who would dare to be the first to write 'firmly support'? That would be stabbing their old chief in the heart and chilling the hearts of the entire military. If they didn't write it, or wrote even half a sentence less, the military discipline inspection commission's car could be at their doorstep by tomorrow. What to do in the end? They could only have the political commissar bite the bullet, pick up the pen, and copy the clichés from the Party newspaper word for word to finish the task. Is this what they call promoting inner-Party democracy and soliciting opinions? This is clearly holding a gun to their heads and forcing every general in the military to press their fingerprints one by one.

By February 6, the Huai Ren Tang in Zhongnanhai was brightly lit, and the drafting group held its first plenary meeting. The fact that Xi chose to start this at the Huai Ren Tang itself carried an ominous air. Friends familiar with CCP history know that exactly 50 years ago, on the autumn night of October 6, 1976, Hua Guofeng and Ye Jianying replaced the sofas in the Huai Ren Tang with single chairs. Under the guise of holding a standing committee meeting to discuss the fifth volume of Mao's Selected Works, they lured Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan in one by one, closed the doors, and handcuffed them on the spot. Since then, the Huai Ren Tang has become synonymous with turning against someone and taking action within Zhongnanhai. Fifty years later, sitting on the sofa in the center of the Huai Ren Tang, Xi threw out 8 aspects and 39 major issues in one breath, setting a rigid tone of 'sticking to the strict keynote.' He was in high spirits at the time, feeling he was the one sitting in the Huai Ren Tang pulling the net shut. Yet, the 'Birth Chronicle' in Xinhua News Agency leaked the second half of what he said at the time: 'In terms of strictness, one must pay attention to methods and results.' This sentence is too subtle. A dictator holding the power of life and death, having just cut down the top military leader, was muttering at an internal meeting about 'paying attention to methods and results.' This shows that by early February, the undercurrent of backlash from below had already reached his ankles. Even he himself felt insecure, knowing that relying solely on hard-handed cutting could cause this pressure cooker to explode at any time.

Sure enough, by February 28, all 112 feedback opinions from various regions and departments had been collected. The drafting group then mobilized 16 units to produce 28 reports, filtering out five thick ledgers from over 3,300 pages and 1.87 million words of material. On May 6, Xi even personally went to Shanghai to hold a symposium to boost the morale of local lords, and on July 30, the Politburo finalized the October plenary session. On the surface, the train was still rushing forward on Xi's tracks, but as soon as it entered August, the entire train hit the reefs of Beidaihe. On August 3, right at the most sensitive time of the Beidaihe vacation, the General Office of the CCP Central Committee issued a notice to distribute the draft for soliciting opinions to a certain range within the Party for discussion. Immediately after, the 'Birth Chronicle' wrote a sentence that made all Zhongnanhai observers gasp: 'The document drafting group received a total of 58 feedback opinions from old comrades within the Party who have retired from Party and state leadership positions.' Please note, when Xinhua News Agency wrote the 'Birth Chronicle' for the Third Plenary Session the year before last and the Fourth Plenary Session last year, they only reported a general total and never singled out the 'old comrades within the Party who have retired from Party and state leadership positions' for separate registration. This year, not only was it written in black and white, but it was also precise to the single digit: 58. These 58 copies include current central leaders on one end, and retired General Secretaries, Premiers, Chairmen of the NPC Standing Committee, Chairmen of the CPPCC, as well as surviving former Standing Committee members, former Politburo members, and former military leaders on the other. For the first time, the current and the retired were written into the same number.

Over the past year or more, rumors have been circulating both inside and outside China that retired veteran cadres such as Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao harbor intense dissatisfaction with the highest leadership. The wumao argued online that party elders had long lost the ability to interfere in politics, but Xinhua News Agency itself stepped forward to confess: the veteran cadres not only read the draft, but also submitted written opinions, which, combined with the opinions of the current central leadership, totaled a full 58 submissions sent back to the General Office of the CCP Central Committee. In August at Beidaihe, the sea breeze blew against the old villas along the shore as those octogenarian elders put on their reading glasses, opened the confidential letterbags sent by the General Office, and turned the pages of that draft of over 10,000 words. When they flipped to the second part on strengthening party spirit and saw that the whole text was still plastered with the Two Establishes, the Four Consciousnesses, and the Two Upholds, and that the Big Boss still wanted to use party building to weld personal dictatorship into the party constitution, could those veteran cadres refrain from heavily criticizing with the red pencils in their hands? The origin story did not dare to publish the exact words criticized by the elders, but it honestly surrendered a set of absurd data. Throughout the August solicitation of opinions, all parties put forward a total of 1,173 revision suggestions. Deducting duplicates, there were 1,076 left, among which principled opinions directly demanding a change in direction and shaking the foundations numbered as high as 162. And the result? The drafting group controlled by Wang Huning and Cai Qi ultimately only added or rewrote 81 places, covering 208 opinions. Xinhua News Agency calculated a percentage itself, called an absorption rate of 17.7 percent, which is simply a joke in the history of high-level CCP document drafting. What concept is that? It means that when the veteran cadres, various provincial and ministerial ministries, and major military regions submitted ten opinions, Cai Qi and Wang Huning took them, didn't even look at them, and directly threw eight and a half of them into the shredder. As for how many of the 162 principled opinions demanding a change in route and direction were actually adopted, Xinhua News Agency could calculate clearly down to one decimal place earlier, but when it came to this figure, it simply played deaf and mute, not daring to report a single word.

Even more remarkable is when you take this year's data and make a baseline comparison with the previous two years: the Third Plenary Session the year before last put forward 1,911 opinions and made 221 revisions, the Fourth Plenary Session last year put forward 2,112 opinions and made 218 revisions, and this year the number of opinions submitted plummeted by nearly half, while the number of revised places was slashed by more than 60 percent. Why did no one submit opinions anymore? Because nobody is foolish. In an era of secret-police governance, every single word you write on the opinion solicitation form will turn around and enter the black archives of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Ministry of State Security. Rather than writing it down to be thrown into the wastebasket by Cai Qi and stirring up trouble for yourself, it is better to shut up and watch how he dies.

There is also a ghostly numerical discrepancy hidden in this. Remember how many copies were submitted by various regions and departments when soliciting topic opinions in February? 112 copies. The origin story specially marked four characters: all present. But when it came to soliciting opinions on the draft decision in August, the feedback opinions submitted by various regions and departments turned into 111 copies. In the short span of half a year, 112 core major units mysteriously lost one. According to the official rules of the CCP, when the General Office issues a document to collect opinions, that is a political task of supreme importance, and the regional lords would not dare to defy the order and not submit it even if they were given ten times the courage. There is only one kind of possibility for the missing copy: the top leader or even the entire party committee of that department or major military region was wiped out in one go between February and August of this year, paralyzed to the point that not even a responsible person daring to hold a pen to sign and stamp could be found. This vacant slot was printed so blatantly in Xinhua News Agency's press release, looking just like the name erased by a black frame on the August 1 Building roster. On August 21, Lao Xi even ran to Zhongnanhai to hold a symposium for non-party figures, smiling all over his face as he asked the democratic parties to speak the truth and offer sincere advice. The non-party vases nodded repeatedly upon hearing this, and those veteran cadres in Beidaihe who had submitted opinions would probably laugh their teeth off upon hearing it: we just finished speaking the truth in early August, and you didn't even accept two-tenths of it, throwing it all into the Pacific Ocean; who are you acting for now by running to find democratic parties to listen to the truth?

The fire suppressed on paper in August could not be suppressed when sitting face to face at the same table during the Beijing meetings in October. As for what kind of thunderous explosion went off in the Jingxi Hotel on the night of October 28, forcing the seven members of the Standing Committee to still be revising drafts in the middle of the night, let us first enter a brief commercial break and return immediately to reveal the bottom card of that night.

Alright, let's go back to the night of October 28th and continue our discussion about the Jingxi Hotel in late October. A week before the plenary session opened, on October 19th, when the leader presided over the Standing Committee meeting to review the draft, he was visibly uneasy and gave instructions to continue meticulously polishing the document. A document that had been in the works since January and had already gone through over thirty revisions still needed polishing just six days before the meeting—this shows that the 58 opinions from the party elders in August had not been settled at all. When the Fifth Plenary Session officially opened on October 26th, a seemingly casual note in the Xinhua News Agency's account of the event mentioned that the participating comrades were divided into 14 groups. Laymen might just see a routine detail, but insiders would have their eyes pop out at the mention of 14 groups. Why? Let's compare this with history: the Third Plenary Session the year before last had 10 groups, and the Fourth Plenary Session last year also had 10 groups. Moreover, don't forget that after two years of major purges, the number of people who could walk into the Jingxi Hotel this year was significantly lower than last year. Only 162 members of the Central Committee with voting rights attended, and with alternate members, the total was only 279—a full 36 chairs fewer than last year's 315. With over thirty fewer people attending, the number of discussion groups actually increased from 10 to 14, meaning the average room size was forcibly split from over thirty people down to nineteen. Why did Cai Qi, Director of the General Office, carry out such an abnormal split? In high-level CCP meetings, grouping is about dividing forces, and seating is about tactical formation. If they had followed the old rules of ten large groups, with over thirty provincial party secretaries and generals sitting in one large conference room, a single glance between three old military leaders or a table-slam from two regional heavyweights would have caused the atmosphere to spiral out of control. By splitting the large groups into fourteen small cubicles, with fewer than twenty people in each room, and assigning a Politburo member or a member of the Secretariat to watch over each room, any frown or dissenting remark could be reported back to the Standing Committee table by the General Office's stenographers that very night. This secret-police-style splitting tactic was not meant to guard against external enemies, but to prevent the Central Committee members sitting in the Jingxi Hotel from colluding to rebel.

Yet, even after the venue was turned into fourteen prison cells, the 80 percent of the anger that had been tossed into the wastebasket back in August still threatened to blow the roof off. Throughout two and a half days of group discussions, all fourteen rooms were in an uproar. By the night of Wednesday, October 28th, the eve of the plenary session's closing, the red-phone lines between the Jingxi Hotel and Zhongnanhai were completely jammed. The Xinhua News Agency's account of the event pinned this thrilling night into history in black and white: "On the night of October 28, the General Secretary presided over a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee to hear reports on the discussions of each group and to study and determine the revisions to the document." We disclosed in previous episodes that something major happened at the Jingxi Hotel on Wednesday night. At the time, some were skeptical, but now that Xinhua has personally come out to verify it, it is clear that a "firefighting" meeting of the Standing Committee did indeed take place late on the night of October 28th. That night, fourteen hot-potato discussion briefs were laid out in a row on the long table of the Standing Committee. Of course, the briefs wouldn't write which general cursed, but would use official jargon like "some comrades strongly suggest." But among the seven Standing Committee members present, who didn't know which Beidaihe elders stood behind those "some comrades," or which theater command's guns they held? A quick check against the seating chart of the 14 groups made it crystal clear. The seven Standing Committee members sat around the long table; outside was the cold night of late October in Beijing, and inside, the tea went cold, was refilled, and went cold again, as they slogged through from after dinner until the early hours of the morning. Xi flipped through those fourteen briefs page by page, his face darker than the bottom of a pot. That night, what was being argued over at the table was no longer just wording; it was a cutthroat political transaction: if you want the plenary session to pass this document by a show of hands tomorrow afternoon and maintain your superficial dignity, you must write the terms demanded by the elders and the military into the decision, and you must remove those glaring instances of personality cult from the communique. After compromising until dawn, the revised draft was urgently printed and sent back to the 14 groups on the morning of the 29th. The account of the event revealed the final bottom line: during the four short days of the plenary session, the participating Central Committee members raised another 100 opinions, and the Standing Committee made 13 urgent revisions late on the night of October 28th. Don't underestimate these 13 points; although the total number of opinions raised at this year's meeting was half that of the previous two years, these 13 points that forced the Standing Committee to make changes overnight were all strikes at the jugular.

If we open the full text of the decision published on November 1st, we suddenly see a few harsh words that would have been absolutely impossible to see in the Xi family's empire over the past decade: "When there are major differences of opinion on important issues, decisions shall not be made forcibly"; "Individuals shall not be placed above the organization"; "Do not suppress, exclude, or attack comrades who express different opinions." And the most sensitive one: "Seriously investigate and punish false accusations and frame-ups, and carry out clarification and rehabilitation work in a timely manner." Which of these sentences were forcibly inserted after the late night of October 28th? Every word bears the fingerprints of the hands that slammed the table that night. On the afternoon of the 29th, at the Great Hall of the People, the leader sat on the stage, holding his breath as he spat out the words "passed." Immediately after, at 5:42 PM, the communique was issued, and the word "must" in the final sentence was deleted in public, and the words "the entire military" completely disappeared. This is the spot-market delivery of the transaction that took place late on the night of October 28th.

If you only look at that deleted character, you have only seen the surface. What is truly breathtaking is the public schizophrenia between the communique and the text of the resolution, and the collective defection of the core cronies around the boss.

Let's first look at how the communique strips the crown from the boss. In the original text of the resolution's second part on strengthening Party spirit, two sets of language were originally written. The previous paragraph discussed enhancing Party consciousness, Party member consciousness, and vanguard consciousness. Immediately following that, under the next subheading on strengthening education on loyalty to the Party, it was written with the standard mantras of the past decade: deeply comprehending the two establishes, enhancing political consciousness, the greater-interest consciousness, core consciousness, and conformity consciousness, and resolutely safeguarding Old Xi's position as the core of the entire Party. As a result, in the plenary communique on October 29th, the drafter did something extremely malicious: he copied these five subheadings of this section verbatim into the communique, except that the entire paragraph under the first subheading—the two establishes, the four consciousnesses, the four confidences, the two safeguards, and the core position—was deleted without even a punctuation mark remaining. The communique only retained the first three consciousnesses: Party consciousness, Party member consciousness, and vanguard consciousness. From the 19th Central Committee's 6th and 7th plenums to the 20th Central Committee's 2nd, 3rd, and 4th plenums, whenever it was a formal central plenum discussing affairs, the two establishes and the two safeguards had never been absent from the communique. This year, however, the four consciousnesses were ruthlessly chopped down to three consciousnesses, and the two that were slashed off with a single blade happened to be core consciousness and conformity consciousness. The communique instantly proclaimed that from then on, when the whole Party talks about loyalty, it means loyalty to the Party; no one is to ever mention absolute devotion to the core or falling in line with the core again.

As soon as the plenary communique threw this crown into the garbage can, the next morning, on the morning of October 30th at a press conference, Hu Heping, Executive Deputy Minister of the Publicity Department, sweated profusely as he recited the two establishes once more before Chinese and foreign reporters. On the same day, Wang Huning also followed suit by reciting them at a meeting of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Party Group, and even Hu Chunhua, sitting at the edge of the table, joined in to speak. What was not allowed to be written in the plenary communique was frantically shouted back and patched up by the propaganda system for three consecutive days after the meeting. This is what you call a typical political breakdown: the more your pants have fallen off, the more you have to cover them desperately with both hands and shout everywhere that they haven't fallen.

An even more ruthless killing blow is hidden in the second half of the resolution. While the first half at least left a paper-mâché crown for the boss in a corner of the text, the second half directly placed four life-taking tight-箍咒 (tightening hoops) upon him. Listen to the exact wording written into the third and fourth parts of the resolution: perfecting and implementing the tenure system for leading cadres, promoting the normalization of leading cadres being able to be promoted or demoted, intensifying efforts to adjust cadres who are incompetent for their current positions, improving the lifelong accountability system for major decisions made by leading cadres, enforcing the top leader's final-statement system, and prohibiting secretaries' special meetings from replacing the Standing Committee of the Party Committee in making decisions. There is also an entire paragraph that outsiders immediately used as a headline upon seeing it, which I will read to you without changing a single word: Party committee and party group secretaries must carry on democracy, earnestly listen to different opinions, correctly treat the opinions of the minority, refrain from arbitrary rule and patriarchal systems, not make arbitrary statements on matters that should be collectively studied, not use personal opinions to replace collective decisions of the leadership team, not arbitrarily change collective decisions, and not demand layer by layer the maintenance of the top leader's personal authority; they shall not practice arbitrary rule or patriarchal systems, and shall not use personal opinions to replace collective decisions.

Where has the biggest arbitrary rule in all of China been practiced over the past decade, where has the biggest patriarch been sitting, and who has used personal opinions to replace collective decisions the most? It is none other than the very person who served as the head of this document-drafting group, and the rules he personally presided over writing look in every single clause like they are describing himself. The tenure system, being able to be promoted or demoted, being adjusted if incompetent, and lifelong accountability for major decisions—on the surface, these provisions are written for the secretaries of provincial and municipal Party committees, but when the Party's 100 million members and the country's 1.4 billion ordinary people read these few words—canceling the lifelong system, implementing the tenure system, stepping down if incompetent, and facing lifetime accountability for wrong decisions—who is the first person that pops into their minds? Besides that Chief Accelerator who changed constitutional term limits and left unfinished, botched projects like the Xiongan New Area and the Belt and Road scattered everywhere, could there possibly be a second person?

Coupled with the preceding sentence—that when significant divergences of opinion arise on important topics, decisions shall not be forcibly made—next year's second half will see the 21st National Congress. When the time comes to discuss whether Old Xi steps down or not, would that count as a significant divergence of opinion on an important topic? According to this plenary resolution passed with him as the head of the drafting group, as long as the elders and committee members have divergences, he is not allowed to forcibly make a decision and must obediently pack his bags and leave according to the tenure system and the rule that cadres can be promoted or demoted. After leaving, he must still face the lifelong accountability system, where accounts are settled and a final tally is made.

Speaking of this, the most heart-wrenching question arises: who exactly wrote this document that includes lifelong accountability for tenure and the requirement for the top leader to be the last to speak? The boss personally revealed the bottom line in his explanation at the plenary session: he himself was the head of the drafting group, and the three deputy heads were Wang Huning, Cai Qi, and Li Xi. When everyone compared this list with the previous two years, the first major thunderclap exploded. The deputy heads of the drafting group for the Third Plenary Session the year before last were Wang Huning, Cai Qi, and Ding Xuexiang; for the Fourth Plenary Session last year, it was Li Qiang, Wang Huning, Cai Qi, and Ding Xuexiang. By this year's Fifth Plenary Session, Executive Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, who had sat firmly as a deputy head of the drafting group for two consecutive years, was kicked out of the core writing team for the first time and replaced by Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) Secretary Li Xi. Since last summer, there have been rumors outside the Great Firewall that the boss was semi-retiring and Ding Xuexiang would take over. Now that Ding Xuexiang cannot even enter the door of the plenary session's drafting group, this self-directed and self-acted succession script has completely become waste paper.

Looking at the three deputy heads remaining on stage, Wang Huning is the number one pen-pusher who has served three dynasties; Cai Qi is the chief steward in charge of the General Office and the Central Guard Bureau; and Li Xi is the head of the CCDI holding the Shangfang Sword. These three are the ironclad vassals that Xi Jinping relies on most in the Standing Committee. Yet, it was precisely these three close confidants who personally presided over the writing of the document, nailing the requirements for maintaining the personal authority of the top leader and lifelong responsibility for major decisions into the highest decisions of the Party Central Committee, word by word.

Why did they do this? Because on that late night of October 28, looking at the 58 petitions from party elders and the 14 briefing reports of rebellion from the groups on the table, Wang Huning, Cai Qi, and Li Xi knew better than anyone that the big tree of the boss had rotted from the roots. If they continued to desperately protect his one-man rule, when the reckoning of the 21st National Congress came, the three of them, as the writers, would be the ones buried with him. By writing in that individuals must not be above the organization and that there is lifelong responsibility for decisions, if things go wrong in the future, the three of them can push all the blame onto the top leader alone, saying it was he who forced the decisions back then, and that they had already written in the system that there should be collective decision-making and lifelong accountability. This is not writing a document for the boss; this is clearly three great eunuchs taking advantage of the Emperor's serious illness to jointly write themselves a certificate of immunity from death.

There is also the statement specifically reiterated by Huang Jianfa, Executive Deputy Minister of the Organization Department, at the press conference on October 30, about timely carrying out the work of clarification and rehabilitation. In January, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli had just been labeled and taken down, but in the plenary session decision in October, a back door for clarification and rehabilitation was opened. Those generals in the military who were holding back their anger and wanting to seek justice for their old commanders had long understood this secret signal.

At the end of the program, let's look back at the call at the end of the communique. The word "must" (yao) is gone, and the words "the whole military" are also gone. Some friends might ask, ten years ago in 2016, the Sixth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee also specifically talked about strict party governance, and that year the communique also called on "all party comrades," also without writing "the whole military." Will this year just be following the old rules of ten years ago? Good question. The first paragraph of this birth story from Xinhua News Agency actually brought up the Sixth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee from ten years ago, treating it as a prequel to this decision. So let's put the two communiques together and compare them. Ten years ago, the sentence "all party comrades unite closely" was immediately preceded by "firmly establish political consciousness, overall consciousness, core consciousness, and alignment consciousness." That plenary session in October 2016 was exactly when, after four years of waiting, he officially wrote the two words "core" into the Central Plenary Session communique for the first time, his coronation ceremony of wearing the yellow robe. The reason "the whole military" was not called upon that year was because there was no need to; the military reform had just finished, the guns were held most tightly, and the whole military was in his palm. A full ten years later, in October 2026, it was also a plenary session about strict party governance, also at the Jingxi Hotel. The "core consciousness" and "alignment consciousness" given to him ten years ago, along with the "must" that commanded the whole party, were taken back by others with interest. Where he put on the dragon robe, he was stripped of it, down to the exact month.

And this time, "the whole military" is not that there is no need to call, but that it cannot be called out. Let me be clear: the communique does not call on the whole military because the whole military no longer follows him; the gun in Xi's hand is gone. In the Third Plenary Session the year before last and the Fourth Plenary Session last year, the calls included "the whole party, the whole military, and the people of all ethnic groups in the country." But when it came to the Fifth Plenary Session, the number one major case handled in this session was the military case. Among the 33 people confirmed by the communique to have been expelled from the party, 16 were those in military uniforms like Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli. It was the military that tried them, and the military that judged them. In the end, when calling for unity, not a single "whole military" was called. Look at that Central Military Commission table; five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission were taken down, leaving only the Chairman and Zhang Shengmin at the table. The Fifth Plenary Session added Zhang Shengmin to the Politburo, but not a single Military Commission member was added. Look at the three official documents: the decision behind the communique, the boss's own explanation, and the press conference on October 30. The words "the whole military" appear zero times, the "Chairman Responsibility System of the Military Commission" appears zero times, and the word "military" appears only once in each document, and it is the same sentence: "eliminated the serious hidden dangers existing within the Party, the state, and the military." In these three documents, the only position for the military is as a hidden danger.

On November 2, we analyzed the military newspaper and found that the only ones speaking out on behalf of the Central Military Commission to scold Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were those sitting in desks inside the August 1 Building; not a single word was echoed by the theater commands that actually hold troops. Up until November 2, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and all provinces had held meetings to convey the spirit of the plenary session, but we could not find any reports of the Central Military Commission holding a meeting to convey it. The old rule of the Chinese Communist Party in conquering the country is that the Party commands the gun, but this time the gun refuses to let him command anymore. The propaganda system could still shout about the Two Establishes for three consecutive days after the meeting, trying to make up for the core concept dropped from the communique, but on the side of the gun, no one even bothered to shout for him.

Over the next half month, there are three ignition points that we will watch closely with a magnifying glass. First, look at the whole-army lecture team. Last year, eleven days after the Fourth Plenary Session concluded, the first report meeting of the whole-army lectures was held. The ones who came out to receive the lecture team were the two Vice Chairmen of the Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia and Zhang Shengmin. A year later, Zhang Youxia was put on the list of expulsions from the Party, and Zhang Shengmin entered the Political Bureau. When will this year's whole-army lectures be held? With only Zhang Shengmin showing up alone, will he still recite the Two Establishes that were already deleted from the communique? Second, look at that document of opinions that inexplicably disappeared in August. All 112 documents were present in February, but only 111 remained in August. Which major government office or theater command has paralyzed during this half-year? Sooner or later, this tiger will surface in the disciplinary inspection commission's notice. Third, look at the Qiushi issue published on November 16, to see if it will publish the boss's speech at the Fifth Plenary Session, and whether he will secretly stuff the words gouged out of the communique back into his own magazine, sentence by sentence.

In January this year, when he ordered the opening of this plenary session at Huairentang in Zhongnanhai, what he wanted was a great seal to command the world. By October, the great seal was stamped down, but the person holding the seal handle gently crossed out the word "must" from the communique right in front of the whole world. Crossing out a single word takes less than a second, but for this one second, 58 sets of feedback opinions were thrown back to the General Office, retired veteran comrades were named for the first time, fourteen rooms in the Jingxi Hotel argued for two and a half days, and the long table of the Zhongnanhai Standing Committee burned through the second half of the night of October 28. This time, the word crossed out was "must." By the list of the Twenty-First National Congress, whose name will be the next one crossed out? The answer is already written on the wall. Those few people in Zhongnanhai burned through the second half of the night over a single word.

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