October 3: Old Military Strongmen Take Direct Control of Beijing! Directly Commanding the Capital and the Fifth Plenary Session Venue; Beijing Garrison Command Emptied; Military Bets on Hu Chunhua Entering the CMC, Forcing Xi Jinping to Resign as CMC Chairman [Jiang Feng Vision 20261003 Episode 504]
The video focuses on Beijing's defense and military personnel arrangements ahead of the Fifth Plenary Session. It states that after the commander and political commissar of the Beijing Garrison were transferred or absent, the Joint Staff Department and related units could still command the defense, and discusses the roles of Zhu Chuansheng, Zhang Shengmin, and others. The video also analyzes the military's situation after Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were disciplined, speculating that the military might support Hu Chunhua in entering the Military Commission and demand that Xi Jinping surrender his position as Chairman of the Military Commission.
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Three weeks before the opening of the Fifth Plenary Session, Hu Jintao demanded that the CCP generals take full control of Beijing's defense. Yet at this very juncture, Zhu Jun, the political commissar of the Beijing Garrison, was transferred out of Beijing.
On September 30, in front of the Martyrs' Memorial in Fuzhou, Fujian Province presented flower baskets to the martyrs. An X account specifically monitoring CCP personnel posted that among the attending military leaders was Zhu Jun, with lieutenant general stars already on his shoulders, no longer the major general he was when serving as political commissar of the Beijing Garrison.
Although Fujian's own official press release only mentioned military leaders stationed in Fujian under the military column, Fuzhou's annual flower-basket presentation military delegation only sends one person. In past years, it was always Tang Xinghua, political commissar of the Eastern Theater Command Army, but this year it was replaced by Zhu Jun, who came from Beijing. Chen Yuan, commander of the Beijing Garrison, has been missing since July, reportedly placed under isolated investigation by the Military Commission Discipline Inspection Commission.
This can only mean one thing: the CCP generals watching Beijing had no intention of relying on the Garrison in the first place. If not the Garrison, then who? During those days of the Fifth Plenary Session, whose orders were the troops in Beijing actually obeying? This answer was revealed once back in March.
On March 27, Wen Jiabao returned to the Institute of Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Someone watching the car he was riding in recognized the license plate. What kind of car was a retired premier of over a decade riding in, and how did it become the answer to Beijing's defense?
Looking back inside the meeting venue, the disciplinary actions against Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli had already been decided by the Political Bureau on September 21. By the Fifth Plenary Session, over two hundred members of the Central Committee still had to raise their hands, requiring a two-thirds majority to pass. The reformists hold 40% of the votes, and if they really wanted to block it, they could have, but they chose not to. Why? The reformists did not block it, and the military has few votes in the venue, so the two old senior officials are about to be rubber-stamped just like that. Can the military swallow this insult? And if they really swallow it, what will they get in return?
It boils down to two things: Can Old Xi continue to serve as Chairman of the Military Commission? When the communique of the Fifth Plenary Session is released on October 29, will there be a sentence like this: Hu Chunhua is additionally appointed as Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission?
Today we will start from Beijing's defense. Let's first talk about something many people haven't noticed: last March, the commander of the Beijing Garrison was transferred away, and this position has been vacant for nearly ten months. Was there no one available to assign? Zhang Youxia deliberately refrained from arranging a new commander precisely to make it convenient for himself and Liu Zhenli to directly command the garrison troops.
The appointment of the Garrison Commander requires an order from the Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and any candidate must be submitted to Xi Jinping's desk. Nine times out of ten, the person Xi nods to is someone he trusts; yet, at a critical moment, he might not be able to command them, so it is better not to appoint anyone at all.
After the military reform, the Garrison, which was previously under the jurisdiction of the Beijing Military Region, was placed directly under the CMC. Liu Zhenli is the Chief of the Joint Staff Department, and the Garrison troops and the Central Guard Bureau are effectively under his unified command. A special operations brigade of the 38th Group Army is also stationed year-round at the Xishan Command Center in Beijing. In this way, orders issued from Xishan do not need to pass through anyone else and go directly to the barracks of the Garrison troops.
Does Xi Jinping understand this? He does. On January 14th of this year, the Beijing Garrison held a plenary session of its Party Committee. The next day, a new name, Chen Yuan, appeared in the Beijing Daily report; he was originally a man of Peng, the commander of the Shanghai Armed Police Corps. Everyone should remember this date. Six days later, on January 20th, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli met with trouble.
Some friends might ask: can Chen Yuan, an Armed Police Major General from Shanghai, really control the Garrison troops after being there for only six days? His involvement might not have much to do with the trouble Zhang and Liu faced. That is not an unreasonable point. But look at what the Garrison troops did next: as soon as Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were in trouble, the Garrison troops took over the August 1st Building on behalf of Xi. However, when they tried to go one step further to take over the Xishan Command Center, they were blocked by Han Shengyan, the commander of the Central Theater Command, who brought the 38th Group Army to stop them.
Han Shengyan comes from an Air Force background and is on Hu Jintao's side. He sat in Xishan and stood his ground against Xi's faction. The party elders refused to leave Beijing, and a brigade of the 38th Group Army guarded Xishan to protect them. The position that Zhang Youxia had left vacant for ten months was originally intended to be a convenience for himself, but when it came to a life-or-death moment, the troops in the capital helped Xi first. Therefore, in the eyes of the elders, the Beijing Garrison is fundamentally unreliable.
What followed was wave after wave of pressure. In March, the Two Sessions were held, and NPC deputies and CPPCC members from all walks of life entered the venue. No matter how capable Cai Qi is, he could not keep a CMC Vice Chairman in custody at that time. Zhang Shengmin took advantage of the gap during the Two Sessions to escape. Immediately after, two more brigades of the 38th Group Army arrived on the outskirts of Beijing.
Liu Yuan and Li Zuocheng were stationed in Baoding. Baoding is over 100 kilometers from Beijing and is the old base of the 38th Group Army; they could reach the city with one press of the gas pedal. Members of the red families went one by one to talk to the officers of the Garrison troops. The Garrison troops first claimed to remain neutral, but later indicated their obedience to Liu Yuan's orders, and the guns were turned around just like that.
By April or May, Zhang Shengmin finally sat back in the August 1st Building and took over the daily work of the CMC. By July, Zhang Shuguang was appointed as the secretary of the Military Commission for Discipline Inspection. Chen Yuan missed both the Party anniversary meeting and the rank-conferring ceremony, and reports leaked that he had been isolated for investigation; one of the charges was his involvement in the case of Li Keqiang swimming in Shanghai.
By the summer, the various troops around Zhongnanhai were categorized into different ranks. Zhou Hongxu was put in charge of the Central Guard Bureau, and both in name and in reality, things became compliant. The Garrison troops are nominally under Zhang Shengmin's management, but the ones who truly call the shots inside are the descendants of those red families.
Look at how Hu Jintao arranged things. In July, he had the Garrison troops and the Central Guard Bureau configured in a one-to-one ratio, watching each other: one Garrison soldier at the door, one Guard Bureau soldier at the door; if anyone made an unusual move, the one next to them would see it first. Behind them, the special operations brigade in Xishan was ready to suppress anyone who didn't listen.
A few days ago, Hu Jintao's requirements were further tightened: the generals must fully control Beijing's defense. Looking back, Zhu Jun's departure is not surprising at all. The commander and political commissar of the Beijing Garrison were both cleared out, leaving no one behind, so that orders could be issued directly from the CMC to the companies of the Garrison.
But since Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli are both gone, when orders are issued from the CMC, who exactly in the CMC is issuing them? This time, the one directly commanding the Garrison is the CMC. There are two sides to the CMC: one is Zhang Shengmin, who presides over the daily work of the CMC, and the other is the Joint Staff Department, which manages the deployment of the Garrison.
Therefore, although the Garrison has no commander or political commissar, the troops have not dispersed. Where the troops are placed, how many checkpoints are set up on Chang'an Avenue, and how many layers of soldiers stand outside the venue are all orders issued by the Joint Staff Department. The Chief of the Joint Staff was originally Liu Zhenli; after Liu Zhenli met with trouble, the person presiding over the work of the Joint Staff Department is Deputy Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Zhu Chuansheng.
If he doesn't listen, the previous efforts to clear the Garrison, replace the Guard Bureau, and mobilize the 38th Group Army would all be in vain. If he had issued the order to the other side on the day of the Fifth Plenary Session, the elders sitting in the venue would have become turtles in a jar. Therefore, the most important thing for the old military leaders over these past few months has been to keep a close eye on this person.
Many people outside looked at Zhu Chuansheng's resume and began to feel uneasy. He used to be the commander of the Eastern Theater Command Army. The Eastern Theater Command Army is the foundational old base that Xi Jinping built up over a dozen or so years working in Fujian and Zhejiang. Can someone coming from that background be trusted to guard the main floodgate? This worry sounds quite reasonable, but let's not jump to conclusions just yet.
If you open his resume year by year, checking when he went, who sent him, and what he went to do, the conclusion is actually the exact opposite. Zhu Chuansheng went to the Eastern Theater Command Army in March of last year. At that time, Zhang Youxia had already grasped military power in his hands and was purging the 31st Group Army and the Fujian faction. Sending someone to Xi Jinping's old lair as the army commander at that moment was to keep watch on behalf of Zhang Youxia.
Looking further back, he was not part of that circle at all. Zhu Chuansheng came from the 41st Group Army of the Guangzhou Military Region, and later went to the Marine Corps, rising all the way to become the Marine Corps Commander. He has nothing to do with the 31st Group Army or the Fujian faction; he is simply an outsider. Sending an outsider to manage the old lair is precisely because he has no ties to the people there and can bring down the hammer.
What is even more critical is the next step: in September of last year, he was transferred back to Beijing from the Eastern Theater Command to serve as the Deputy Chief of the Joint Staff Department, acting as a deputy to Liu Zhenli. That was one month before the Fourth Plenary Session, exactly when Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were preparing to force Xi Jinping to hand over power inside the meeting venue. If Zhang and Liu did not trust him, they would never have transferred him back at that critical juncture and placed him right under their own noses.
Looking at his resume alone is not enough. In the military, what matters most when determining if someone is trustworthy are connections: who led you, who promoted you, and when the critical moment arrives, whose orders you will follow. Zhu Chuansheng's former senior officer in the 41st Group Army was Li Zuocheng. Li Zuocheng is also Liu Zhenli's predecessor and once served as the Chief of the Joint Staff.
News coming out of Beijing says that as soon as Zhang and Liu had trouble, Li Zuocheng immediately demanded to dispatch troops into Beijing and was also helping Liu Yuan draft a military plan. The news also says that Li Zuocheng had already given word to Zhu Chuansheng: pledge allegiance to Hu Jintao and obey Liu Yuan's commands.
Some friends might ask, does just a word over the phone actually work? Why would an active-duty lieutenant general obey a retired former senior officer? The problem happens to be that at this time the upper echelon of the military is empty. There are only two people left on duty in the Central Military Commission; no one is backing Zhu Chuansheng, and no one can promise him a future. At a time like this, a phone call from an old superior who brought him all the way up from the 41st Group Army carries more weight than a piece of paper with an appointment.
Of course, making a call doesn't mean the other person nodded in agreement, and whether it works depends on what he did. The next event was his answer. On March 27, Wen Jiabao returned to the Institute of Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for a public appearance, smiling and waving to the surrounding crowd. Before this, rumors were flying everywhere outside that Wen Jiabao's entire family was under house arrest; this public appearance shattered the rumors without a fight.
However, what is truly worth looking at is the car Wen Jiabao rode in. Some people recognized it from the license plate as a vehicle belonging to the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission. News reports say that Wen Jiabao's security was handled by the Joint Staff Department. The attitude has already been laid out there: Zhu Chuansheng accepted Li Zuocheng's message. Therefore, the defense of the Fifth Plenary Session venue does not rely primarily on the Beijing Garrison District, but on the Joint Staff Department and that group of veteran soldiers. Even if the Garrison District is emptied out, it doesn't matter.
Then some friends might ask, why grasp the defense of Beijing city so tightly? Isn't the Fifth Plenary Session just a meeting where people raise their hands? Is all this really necessary? Ultimately, Hu Jintao is preparing for armed conflict because the struggle at the Fifth Plenary Session has been far too fierce.
Let's start with the most critical matter at the Fifth Plenary Session. On September 21, the Political Bureau expelled Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli from the party and the military. Many people outside the wall took one look and concluded: Xi Jinping won. The two biggest opposing figures in the military were arrested, and their party memberships were revoked. By the time of the Fifth Plenary Session, the two hundred or so members of the Central Committee would only be left to raise their hands, and a two-thirds majority would be enough.
Xi Jinping naturally wants to pass it. The decision made by the Political Bureau was ultimately decided behind closed doors by twenty-odd people; once the Plenary Session ratifies it, it becomes an ironclad verdict jointly determined by the hand-raising of over two hundred Central Committee members. In the future, anyone who wants to overturn the verdict for Zhang and Liu will be overturning the entire Central Committee.
Zeng Qinghong's faction also wants it to pass, because this is the bargaining chip to negotiate with Wen Jiabao and the others. Otherwise, why go to so much trouble on August 28 to revoke the qualifications of these two people as delegates to the National People's Congress with a single official announcement? Everyone knows in their hearts how Zhang and Liu disappeared.
Consequently, many friends have an idea: the reformists hold 40% of the votes, and ratification requires a two-thirds majority. As long as the reformists do not raise their hands, this disciplinary action cannot pass. On paper, that is how the math works, but when you actually arrive at the meeting venue, it is not that simple.
Not a single thing the reformists want to accomplish at this plenary session can be separated from the conservatives. For example, pushing Hu Chunhua into the Political Bureau and the Central Military Commission, and having those people from the Fujian faction resign, all require a majority vote by a show of hands at the plenary session. The reformists only have 40% of the votes, and a portion of the conservatives must follow along and raise their hands for it to work.
Looking further ahead, next year is the 21st National Congress. The list of party delegates, the list of Central Committee members, the ranking of the Standing Committee, and who will become Premier—every single one of these must be negotiated with the conservatives. If the reformists do not allow the disciplinary action against Zhang and Liu to pass, the conservatives and Xi Jinping's faction will immediately unite, giving them 60% of the votes, and Hu Chunhua's chances for a seat on the Politburo or as Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission will be ruined.
Therefore, the reformists are deeply unwilling to accept this disciplinary action, yet they must ratify it at the plenary session. Moreover, Hu Jintao originally intended for the conservatives to handle this case, likely calculating that they would have no choice but to let it go in the end.
However, the party most unable to swallow this insult is the Chinese military. The case against Zhang and Liu was orchestrated from start to finish by Cai Qi of the General Office, yet the signature was placed on the Central Military Commission. Today, the daily operations of the Military Commission are presided over by Zhang Shengmin, meaning the document expelling the two former leaders was signed by the military itself. Can you imagine the military not being furious?
But no matter how furious they are, the military has very few hands to raise in the meeting hall, and they cannot stop the ratification. Since they cannot stop it, the only thing the military can ponder is: what can be gained in exchange for swallowing this insult?
What exactly can the Chinese military gain in exchange for swallowing this? To know what can be gained, one must first look at what chips the military still has left. Many outsiders, when mentioning the Chinese military, have the first reaction: this is the toughest faction within the party, with votes and guns; when it comes to bargaining, who dares not give the military face? But if you lay these three things out one by one, the conclusion is exactly the opposite.
There are 205 Central Committee members elected at the 20th National Congress, of which over 40 wear military uniforms. This is a significant voting bloc that everyone must weigh carefully. However, after rounds of purges in recent years, 12 have been ousted, 10 have been officially announced as under investigation but not yet expelled, 9 have had their positions taken by others with no official word, 7 have stepped down and their whereabouts are unknown, and only 6 are confirmed to still be in their positions.
Some friends might ask, if the votes are gone, the guns are still there; can they use the guns to block this disciplinary action? To bring out troops to prevent the Central Committee from voting for the disciplinary action against Zhang and Liu would be a mutiny. Before the Fourth Plenary Session last year, Zhang Youxia suggested that the military should step in and force the Central Committee to vote to remove Xi Jinping. Hu Jintao did not agree, and even though Zhang Youxia proposed it, it was not carried out. Today, Zhang Youxia is gone, so who would dare to propose it again?
But then again, not being able to fire the gun does not mean the gun is useless. If the Fifth Plenary Session is to be held, the doors of the meeting hall must be guarded; if someone really flips the table at the meeting, someone must be there to pin them down. Only the military can handle these tasks. This is the capital the military still has to sit at the table and bargain with others today.
Friends who have played cards know that if your hand is weak, playing any single card is suicide; but if you coordinate well with your partner, small cards can beat big ones. The military is in this situation today: they have too few votes to block the disciplinary action alone; they cannot fire their guns, as that would be mutiny. To play these two cards, they must find a partner.
Look to Xi Jinping? Zhang and Liu were taken down under his watch. Look to Zeng Qinghong's conservative faction? They were the ones who stripped Zhang and Liu of their National People's Congress delegate qualifications at the end of August, and they will lead the vote to ratify this disciplinary action at the Fifth Plenary Session. There is only one person left who can be a partner for the military: Hu Jintao.
As soon as the incident with Zhang and Liu occurred, the generals collectively went to ask Hu Jintao to stand up for the military. So how does this hand of cards pair with Hu Jintao? The military provides the guns. At the Fifth Plenary Session, Hu Jintao will have Wen Jiabao engage in a political struggle, but for the struggle to continue, someone must guard the door outside. Who will guard the doors of the meeting hall? Who will pin down anyone who flips the table? These are all tasks for the military.
The military places this gun on Hu Jintao's side, guarding the doors for him at the Fifth Plenary Session. What does Hu Jintao provide? He trades the dozens of votes the military lost for a much harder vote. This year at Beidaihe, Hu Jintao entrusted Wen Jiabao to bring a message to the conservatives, stating clearly: nominating Hu Chunhua as the next-generation leader is in accordance with the rules; the Central Plenary Session can certainly discuss other candidates, but the nominee must be approved by the military. The military has veto power.
This single sentence from Hu Jintao is equivalent to giving the military an extra vote, one that is harder than the sum of the original forty-plus: a veto vote. Who succeeds to power only counts if the military nods. To put it bluntly, this is a trade.
Some friends might ask, is this partner reliable? For the past thirty years, the generals of the CCP have followed three successive chairmen of the Central Military Commission. During Jiang Zemin's time, the buying and selling of military offices became a trend, and eventually, the two Vice Chairmen of the Central Military Commission, Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, both fell due to corruption. Under Xi Jinping, generals have fallen one after another, and of the seven members of the Central Military Commission, only two remain today; Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli are both gone.
As for Hu Jintao, who was sandwiched in the middle, everyone said he had no ability at the time, but now looking back, the generals know: it was precisely during Hu Jintao's ten years that the generals were the safest. Furthermore, there are already many capable and resilient generals on Hu Jintao's side.
Last December, Han Shengyan and Yang Zhibin, both from the air force backgrounds, were promoted to generals. One became the commander of the Central Theater Command, leading the Thirty-Eighth Army to guard Beijing; the other became the commander of the Eastern Theater Command, keeping an eye on Old Xi's lair. This July, Wang Gang took over as the air force commander, joined by Zhang Shengmin, who manages the day-to-day operations of the Military Commission, and Zhou Hongxu, who is in charge of the Central Guard Bureau—everyone is in their respective positions. The opponent has been chosen, and the pieces have been deployed.
That leaves the final step: to whom should this veto be cast? Hu Jintao had long since coordinated with the generals and old military leaders, entrusting Hu Chunhua to the military. Is the military willing to accept this trust? After the incidents involving Zhang and Liu, the generals had only one thought left in their minds: if we follow someone, we follow someone who treats soldiers' lives as actual lives.
When they pick a person, the number one thing they look at is not how capable you are, but whether your spine is stiff, and whether you will turn around and sell us out when it is a matter of life and death. Measuring Hu Chunhua against this yardstick: he is indecisive, preaching harmony and compromise in all matters; Li Keqiang was gentle and compromised for the sake of the greater whole, only to end up losing his life in a swimming pool. Hu Chunhua is not of this temperament; he is stubborn about principles, speaks bluntly, and never looks back once he sets his mind on something—making him look much more like a general of the Chinese Communist Party.
Let's test this with a current event unfolding right now. What Zeng Qinghong and his faction want most right now is to extract four words from Hu Chunhua's mouth: never reverse verdicts. As long as Hu Chunhua nods on this, Old Xi's gang can live in peace, and Zeng Qinghong's faction won't have to worry about old scores being settled someday.
During the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping was overthrown and wrote a letter to Mao Zedong, pledging in writing that he would never reverse verdicts. In his later years, Mao Zedong himself said, "Never reversing verdicts is unreliable." Sure enough, as soon as Deng Xiaoping came back out, he turned the Cultural Revolution completely upside down. When Deng Xiaoping was about to make a comeback back then, his situation was much harder than Hu Chunhua's today, yet he was still willing to write those four words, and after writing them, he reversed verdicts all the same.
Therefore, if it were a shrewder person, they would have signed it casually today—it's just a matter of a single sentence, get to the top first, and whether to reverse verdicts in the future is entirely up to oneself. Yet Hu Chunhua refuses to sign; he made the ugly truths clear beforehand: I will not reverse verdicts at this Fifth Plenary Session, but I also do not promise never to reverse verdicts. He added one more sentence, stating that in the future, Old Xi and his wife will be handled the same way Bo Xilai and his wife were handled back then.
Once these words came out, it gave Zeng Qinghong a major scare, prompting him to briefly ask Hu Jintao to reconsider his successor. He had laid his cards on the table with Wen Jiabao: if Hu Jintao tells him to step up, he steps up; if he is not told to step up, he will retire at the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). These few words spoken to Zeng Qinghong were a warning, but if you listen to them again from the standpoint of the generals, the meaning is completely different. This is a commitment.
刚刚 The conservatives have just stripped Zhang and Liu of their representative qualifications, and at the Fifth Plenary Session, they are going to take the lead in raising their hands to endorse the disciplinary actions. Right at this moment, Hu Chunhua said to the faces of the conservatives: I do not guarantee that this account will not be settled. Isn't this precisely what the generals wanted to hear?
However, no matter how tough the words sound, they are still just words. Some might ask, can Hu Chunhua's words be trusted? Sounding great before taking office, only to turn hostile and deny everything after taking office—aren't there plenty of such people among Chinese Communist politicians? The generals themselves harbor this exact doubt in their hearts. Therefore, military men never judge a person by their mouth; they look at whether this person shrinks back at the critical moment, and whether what is said to their face is the same thing done behind their backs.
So let's look at how Hu Chunhua made it all the way here. He is a rural kid from Wufeng Mountain in Hubei. His family was poor; from elementary school until finishing high school, he walked dozens of miles of mountain roads to go to school every day, and before leaving home, he would pick up some river sand along the riverbank to sell along the way to save up for tuition.
Along the road he walked, the hardest part was not the mountain road, but these past dozen or so years. Ever since Old Xi came to power, he has constantly investigated Hu Chunhua, pressing him all the way from Politburo member and Vice Premier down to the CPPCC. If there were even the slightest issue with Hu Chunhua, he would have been locked up in Qincheng Prison long ago. This is what the generals look at when evaluating a person.
Besides, even if Hu Chunhua wanted to shrink back someday, he can no longer shrink back. He wants to seek justice for Li Keqiang, and these words have already been spoken out loud. Seeking justice requires settling accounts, and settling accounts cannot bypass the cases of Zhang and Liu, because behind both cases are the exact same group of people. If he were to turn around someday and shake hands for peace with Old Xi's gang, the reformists would not agree first, and the military would disagree even more; his position as General Secretary would then become unstable to sit in.
To put it bluntly, Hu Chunhua and the military are tied to the same boat. He needs the military's guns to protect him, and the military needs his hands to reverse the verdicts for Zhang and Liu. For justice to be reclaimed in the future, this current step requires pushing Hu Chunhua into the Military Commission.
Yet simply letting Hu Chunhua enter the Military Commission is not enough; once he gets in, there is still a Chairman of the Military Commission sitting at the top. What the generals fear the most is the Twenty-First National Congress, where Old Xi hands over the General Secretary and President titles, but holds onto the Military Commission chairmanship himself for a few more years. Zhang and Liu perished under his watch; if he holds onto the Military Commission chairmanship for another two years, who is next in line? Even if Hu Chunhua becomes General Secretary, with a Military Commission Chairman still looming over his head, what will he use to reverse the verdicts for Zhang and Liu?
Therefore, if Hu Chunhua enters the Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping must hand over the chair of the CMC Chairman. These two matters are linked, and the military will not concede an inch on this point. The title can be kept for now, and it does not have to be written in the communique; this is the room left for the dignity promised to Hu and Wen by Xi. However, the actual work must be handed over; from now on, Xi must stop touching military affairs.
Counting it this way, the military's resentment has been measured. Once the accounts are settled, the military's stance is set. Once set, they will provide full support, and they will guard the doors of the meeting hall; if anyone tries to flip the table at the meeting, they will let the guns do the talking. Zeng Qinghong could not stop Hu Chunhua from rising, so what backup plans does he still have in his hands? How does Wen Jiabao intend to respond? We will continue to settle the accounts for this table in the next episode.