Xi Clings to the CMC Chairmanship? Hu Jintao Strips Him of Military Power! Russia Leaks Xi's Worsening Health: Doctors Say His Cognitive Function Will Spiral Out of Control and Can't Be Covered Up Within a Year; Xi Has Raised the White Flag, Huawei's Amulet Fails, Shenzhen's Old Roots Digged Up! [Jiang Feng Perspective 20261013 Episode 512]
This episode analyzes the drastic changes in China's current high-level political situation, including overseas leaks indicating the deterioration of Xi Jinping's health and the strategic considerations this brings to Russia, the shifts in public opinion trends behind the quality controversy surrounding Zunjie automobiles, the power reshuffle reflected by the downfall of former Shenzhen Qianhai official Wang Shourui, and the high-level maneuvering and power transition trends surrounding the position of Chairman of the Central Military Commission.
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Hello friends, and welcome to Jiang Feng Horizon. The Fifth Plenary Session hasn't even started yet, but the person in Zhongnanhai has already waved the white flag—this is Jiang Feng's assessment of the situation over the past few days. What he is fighting for now has shifted from how to win to how to lose, and from whether he can still make a comeback to what he can still take away when leaving the table. He wants to keep the position of Chairman of the Central Military Commission, keep Huawei, keep his old roots in Shenzhen, and protect as many of his followers as he can. Yet precisely at this critical juncture, his last few cards are failing one by one. In the past, the boss decided who stayed; now, others decide what the boss is allowed to keep. A Russian-language leak channel that has long kept its eyes on the Kremlin has once again linked his health to China's leadership change, and has begun calculating this ledger for Moscow: what will Russia do if Beijing changes its boss? Domestically, the test video of Zunjie disappeared across multiple platforms, but it failed to shut the mouths of People's Daily and Zhejiang Propaganda. On October 12, another chief of Shenzhen Qianhai was officially announced to be under investigation, and the official announcement included a few extra words: taking the initiative to confess problems to the organization.
Let's look at the Russian angle first. Our regular viewers should remember GeneralSVR; Jiang Feng followed it closely twice last June. It is an anonymous Russian-language channel that specializes in monitoring the Kremlin, Putin, and the inner workings of the Russian security system. It has always claimed to have sources within active and retired intelligence and security services—in plain terms, it is Russia's own Kremlin-watching "bedside rumor" group. This identity is quite interesting. In the Chinese-speaking world, people gossip about Xi Jinping every day, saying his health is poor, he is about to step down, or speculating on his successor; everyone is used to that. GeneralSVR is different. Its bread and butter is Putin; it usually ponders who in the Kremlin is falling out with whom, which general is about to be in trouble, and where the Russia-Ukraine war is heading next. It turns its lens toward Zhongnanhai to see what price Moscow will have to pay for any move Beijing makes. Last June, this line of inquiry first gained significant traction. GeneralSVR first released information saying the Russian side had received intelligence regarding Xi's health and changes in Beijing's power structure. A few days later, it went a step further, stating that if China were to change its leadership team, the new team would likely be more willing to deal with the West, at which point both Russia and Iran would have to recalculate. So, last year, the Russians were asking: if Xi really leaves, will the next person lean toward the United States? By October 9th of this year, the tone had changed. This time, GeneralSVR spoke much more heavily than last year. It claimed that the inner circle of Russian decision-makers is now discussing Xi's health condition. According to the Russian intelligence system's assessment of sources within the Chinese leadership, Xi's current health is very poor and is generally on a downward trend. Even more brutally, the post stated that even if China could mobilize the best medical resources, doctors are not only unable to cure him, but they cannot even stabilize his condition. Furthermore, it relayed the assessment of Xi's attending physician, saying that he will gradually lose control of his cognitive functions, and this state will be difficult to hide from the outside world for more than about a year. Friends, this is no longer the talk from last year about heart problems or his body not holding up; this time, it has pushed the timeline forward, directly discussing whether his body can still support long-term governance and how much longer this can be kept secret.
However, what really made me feel the weight of this post had changed was the second half, because the Russians immediately began to calculate whether Russia would gain or lose if Xi were to be sidelined. It laid out two accounts. First, if China changes its leader, Russia might actually have an opportunity to reduce its increasingly deep dependence on Beijing. Second, with the Russia-Ukraine war at this stage, what Moscow fears most is precisely a sudden change in leadership in Beijing. If a new team comes in, policies will need to be re-explored and relationships re-established. If there is a gap of several weeks or months, Russia could lose its biggest pillar just when it needs China the most. So, while the Russian "bedside rumor" group was still asking last year whether Xi would leave, by before the Fifth Plenary Session this year, they were already asking what Russia would do after Xi leaves. This is an escalation. For the past decade or so, that man has been doing one thing: tying China ever more tightly to himself. If you want to talk strategy with China, you have to talk to me; if you want China's support, you have to find me. The special relationship between Putin and Beijing has also been packaged as a special relationship between the two top leaders. But when Moscow begins to seriously study the next successor, this bond loosens. China is still there, the market is still there, the factories are still there, and oil and gas can still be bought, but the shopkeeper can be replaced. Some people curse you every day, yet they still acknowledge you as the person at the table who cannot be bypassed. Once they stop arguing with you and turn to prepare for a life without you, that is what you call a real contingency plan. Therefore, the most interesting part of GeneralSVR's report this time is that while Putin is still shaking hands with Xi, some in Moscow have already started drafting contingency plans for a China without Xi.
It is precisely at this moment that Patrushev, a very heavy-weight senior security official around Putin, arrived in China. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially announced on October 7th that he would visit China from the 8th to the 13th, and Wang Yi would hold talks with him, with other department heads also engaging with him. The public agenda for the Russian delegation, including China-Russia relations and maritime cooperation, is very interesting given the timing. Russian officials are in Beijing discussing future cooperation, while the Russian political rumor mill is on the other side, calculating the risks after a change in Beijing. Both the overt and covert sides are actually calculating the same thing. Can China's path still be staked solely on Xi Jinping? While outsiders have just begun to prepare for a China without him, inside Beijing, the very political signboard that he cannot afford to have go wrong has also, coincidentally, run into trouble this week.
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With your vitality replenished, let's look at Beijing, specifically at Huawei, the political signboard that cannot afford to fall. We have discussed Huawei's background before—Ren Zhengfei's history as a capital construction engineer and that red economic network in Shenzhen. After Meng Wanzhou's incident, how the boss elevated the fate of a single company to the level of national diplomacy is something we won't repeat today. Just remember one thing: in Xi Jinping's hands, Huawei is no longer just a company. Technological self-reliance, the struggle against the U.S., domestic substitution, and communication and digital infrastructure along the Belt and Road—Huawei is the top signboard that has been able to add luster to his path over these years. Therefore, when it comes to preparing an exit strategy, this card of Huawei is far more important than ordinary personnel. The company can remain, the technology can remain, and the engineers can go to work as usual, but the political umbrella covering Huawei will change its meaning once someone else takes hold of it. In the past, Huawei proved to Xi that his path was correct. If Huawei continues to thrive in the future without needing Xi's protection, it will transform from his political asset into a national asset that the next administration can also take over.
However, Maextro (Zunjie) exposed this umbrella this time. On October 8, Dongchedi conducted emergency braking tests on three Maextro V800 vehicles, and all three suffered fractures at the pedal bracket position. Maextro responded that same night, claiming the product was developed and verified according to standards higher than national and industry requirements, and that the same failure had not occurred in actual user scenarios. In the same response, they announced an optimization of the component design and free upgrades for delivered users. We have already discussed the technical controversy; today, let's look only at the subsequent political maneuvers. The test videos began to disappear from platforms: the main video on Bilibili became unavailable, it could not be seen on WeChat Channels, and the main video on the tester's Weibo also vanished. Following the old script, once things reached this stage, the next step would be to cool things down, remove the videos, let the hot searches drop, and a few days later, everyone would be busy with something else after a new news story broke. But this time, it wasn't contained. On the night of October 8, the Xinhua News Agency's publishing terminal first reposted Maextro's statement. This move is easy to understand: when a company is in trouble, state-level media spreads the company's narrative to help stabilize the situation. However, a few hours later, the relevant page was taken down. In other words, Xinhua initially caught the shield handed over by the company, but it didn't keep holding it up. On October 11, the People's Daily client directly placed this Maextro controversy into the topics of mass-produced cars and automotive safety regulation. The most striking sentence was: "The brake pedal of a car should never fracture during driving." Where this sentence is powerful is that it didn't follow the company's line about extreme operating conditions, but instead drew a hard line: whether you are a million-dollar luxury car or a technological flagship, the most basic thing—stepping on the brake—is not something to talk about sentiment with. On October 10, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and the State Administration for Market Regulation officially released management documents for automotive innovation design and R&D test verification to solicit public opinion, and the entire industry began to re-examine the yardstick of safety verification.
By October 12, Zhejiang Propaganda pushed a step further, bluntly titling its article: "The Zunjie V800 Controversy Needs the Truth." The article directly laid out several facts that everyone had seen: the main video could no longer be seen on multiple platforms, and many discussion posts had also disappeared, but the problem did not disappear with them. The article even used very stern language, stating that the issue should not be cooled down or throttled, that they should not rely on deleting videos and cold-treatment to suppress the matter, and that an authoritative third party should be found to investigate the test and the car itself thoroughly. Even more interesting was Hu Xijin. Everyone is familiar with Lao Hu; his nose is always very keen when it comes to which side the wind is blowing hardest in the Chinese public opinion sphere and where one must not crash into a wall. Therefore, what is truly worth watching most of the time is not even what he said, but how far he dared to push his words. On October 9, Lao Hu made things clear: as long as Dongchedi's people indeed used their feet to step on it and did not use external mechanical force to crash into it, the braking pedal bracket of the Zunjie V800 being stepped until it broke was something that should not have happened, and the problem was very serious. He also specifically pointed out that Dongchedi tested the Zhijie and Wenjie at the same time, and those two models did not develop the same flaw, so the problem should be sought in the hardware design, procurement, and quality control of the Zunjie V800 itself. By the 10th, he was even less polite, stating directly that Zunjie's response was evasive and lacked an answer that truly faced public safety concerns. The enterprise kept emphasizing that it was higher than national standards and extreme working conditions, but the fact that the pedal bracket was stepped and broken three times could not be bypassed. On the 11th, Zunjie customer service stated again that the upgrade plan for the pedal bracket base would be finalized at the end of the month and rolled out starting in November. Lao Hu simply poked a hole in the window paper: verbally refusing to admit that the product had a problem, while already preparing upgrades with his hands, was actually a rather subtle admission of a mistake. By the 12th, Lao Hu took another step forward. Zhejiang Propaganda specifically discussed a certain voice in its article: as long as someone pointed out problems with domestic automobiles, they were labeled with smearing domestic cars, suppressing Chinese automobiles, and not supporting national industry. After reading this, Lao Hu directly said that he deeply agreed with this passage, followed by another even more interesting remark: the more famous an enterprise was, the more it would be watched by public opinion, and the more it had to withstand wind and rain. What Zunjie and Harmony Intelligent Mobility should be doing right now is not hoping that the public opinion sphere will only have flowers and applause, but facing criticism and questioning head-on. Lao Hu even advised those voices that superficially cheered for Zunjie while leading the whole matter toward conspiracy theories to stay far away; relying on these voices to extricate themselves would only sink them deeper and deeper.
Look at how intriguing this is. One of Lao Hu's most adept skills in the past was translating political winds into language that ordinary people could understand. Therefore, what is truly worth watching this time is that for four consecutive days, he did not guide this controversy surrounding Huawei toward the path of domestic enterprises being under siege; instead, he pushed Zunjie step by step toward product responsibility and public opinion supervision. Because in the past, Huawei's most useful layer of moat was precisely that once Huawei was touched, it easily escalated from product problems to domestic technology, and from domestic technology to patriotism. Now, even Lao Hu publicly stated that the larger an enterprise is, the more scoldings it must take, and if a product has a problem, it is a product problem—do not use national industry to shield it. This is no longer just Lao Hu's individual attitude. Earlier, the People's Daily put the brake pedal on the table, Zhejiang Propaganda chased after asking why the video was deleted, and now even Lao Hu, who is best at reading the wind, is advising Huawei-affiliated enterprises not to count on passing through with conspiracy theories and national sentiment, and is no longer fiercely defending Huawei. He did not talk about overseas forces smearing Huawei, nor did he frame Dongchedi as handing a knife to the United States. To someone like Lao Hu who is extremely sensitive to political winds, this in itself is a signal. This time, repackaging all criticisms against Huawei into political attacks is a path that has become difficult to walk. As we discussed previously, Wang Huning is stepping back into the position of drafting party affairs, while the ideological control that Cai Qi previously held in his hands is loosening. Today's Huawei controversy happens to be a good match for cross-referencing: some platforms suppress it while Hu Xijin dares to speak out, Xinhua News Agency retracts the enterprise statement while the People's Daily speaks sternly, and Zhejiang Propaganda directly puts video deletion and cold-treatment on the table. Whether this pen has indeed changed hands—let us see what it writes next.
On October 12, the Guangdong Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision announced that Wang Shourui, former member of the Standing Committee of the Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee and former Secretary of the Party Working Committee of the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone, is suspected of serious violations of discipline and law, and has voluntarily surrendered to the organization to face investigation. This person is worth watching because of the keys he once held in his hands: Baoan, the Shenzhen Municipal Government, and Qianhai—especially this last one, Qianhai. Qianhai is not just an ordinary development zone in Shenzhen; with Shenzhen-Hong Kong cooperation, financial opening-up, cross-border services, and system experimentation, Xi Jinping has repeatedly used it over the years as a model for reform and opening-up in the new era. If Shenzhen is the showcase, Qianhai is the most valuable exhibit in that showcase. Wang Shourui became Vice Mayor of Shenzhen in 2023, and in 2024 he entered the Standing Committee of the Municipal Party Committee to take charge of Qianhai. In a place like Qianhai, a single plan is followed by land investment promotion, enterprise finance, and cross-border resources. Whoever holds this key is not just touching a few official documents, but a whole set of machinery that turns policies into money, projects, and connections. Before Wang Shourui took over Qianhai, another person had just set up the institutional framework. In March 2024, Qin Weizhong, then Mayor of Shenzhen, signed and promulgated the Measures for the Administration of the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone, which came into effect on May 1. That same May, Wang Shourui went to take charge of Qianhai. The former signed the rules in the municipal government, and the latter ran the rules in Qianhai. The work of the two connected seamlessly. Looking at the timeline now, Qin Weizhong was investigated on September 21, Zhang Shuofu was investigated on October 8, and Wang Shourui went in on October 12. Three nodes in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Qianhai moved back-to-back over three weeks. We already talked about Zhang Shuofu a few days ago; he used to serve as the secretary of the discipline inspection commission under Cai Qi in Beijing, and later went to Guangzhou. Now that Cai Qi's old line has just been touched, this end in Shenzhen and Qianhai is continuing to unfold. What is truly worth watching this time is whose hands the blade is in. The current Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection is Li Xi; Xi Jinping sent him into the Standing Committee at the 20th National Congress and had him take over the blade of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. But power is always about where the blade ultimately strikes. We have been saying that Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao are re-establishing control over personnel, procedures, and local protective networks ahead of the Fifth Plenary Session. Therefore, the direction in which the discipline inspection system headed by Li Xi strikes its blade is the best observation port. Where has the blade fallen now? On the old line of Cai Qi in Shenzhen and Qianhai. This is much more interesting than simply arresting three officials. If Hu and Wen are indeed taking back their cards, the most effortless play has never been to remove the person at the top of the tower on the first day, but to first replace the hands executing tasks below him. Wang Huning's side tests the pen first—who is still maintaining your unified narrative? Li Xi's side then tests the blade—who can still hide behind the original protective network? A pen and a blade precisely fall upon these two types of power. The pen controls whether you can still tell your own story as the sole version, and the blade controls whether, when trouble hits your people, there is still someone willing to hold down their case files.
The weight of Wang Shourui's voluntary surrender to the organization becomes apparent when placed here. In the past, when he sat in Qianhai, enterprises and subordinates came to him to discuss projects; now the positions are reversed, and he must sit before the investigators to talk about his own affairs. In the past, he held a certain authority over which materials were reported upward; now it is his turn to let others decide which materials he must take out. This is true overturning of the soil. Moreover, he is a native of Heze, Shandong. As we discussed in previous episodes about the Shandong network belonging to that Madame, the person truly worth digging into next is who promoted Wang Shourui all the way, who he partnered with, in whose hands Qianhai's projects landed, and to what level his work actually crossed with Qin Weizhong's. The truly valuable thing is the ledger behind the door. For Xi Jinping, Shenzhen has never been an ordinary city on a map. Xi Zhongxun's special zone legacy, the enterprise network left behind by the infrastructure engineering corps, Huawei's Qianhai tech enterprise network, and the Shenzhen-Hong Kong interface—these things stacked together form the old roots. But the true utility of the old roots is not that the plaque is still hanging, nor that people still recite a few lines of history every year; their true utility is that after you step down, there is still someone here who takes your phone call, who acknowledges your past commitments on your behalf, who guards your past projects, and who has the ability to put an old file back when it is pulled out again. Therefore, Wang Huning's pen is testing how much of Cai Qi's narrative remains; Li Xi's blade is testing how thick the protective network in Shenzhen remains; and what Hu and Wen truly intend to take back is the actual control behind these two things.
At this stage, territory is no longer the hardest thing to protect; the next problem is more realistic: how many of the people working for him can he still protect? The knife has already fallen on his territory, and what comes next depends on the people. We already discussed Wang Zhonglin on October 9th, so I won't go over his resume again today. Let's just look at two points in time: at the end of May, he left his position as Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee, and on June 26th, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress officially appointed him as Vice Chairman of the NPC Environmental and Resources Protection Committee. In other words, he is no longer a local top leader, but the boss still managed to secure a chair for him, and it was written in black and white on the NPC appointment list. According to the traditional understanding of officialdom, reaching this point would make many people breathe a sigh of relief; the position has changed, the rank remains, and it counts as a decent landing. Yet, on October 10th, a leak emerged from outside the Great Firewall claiming that Wang Zhonglin's residences in Shandong and Wuhan had been searched. What makes this news truly worth watching is that it happens to collide with a very sensitive question: can the person who gave you the position still guard the door for you? I now feel that the Hu-Wen approach is gradually becoming clear: it is not about kicking all of Xi Jinping's people out at once, but about separating the position from the protection. If you are willing to leave the table, you can go to the CPPCC, or a special committee can be arranged to keep things decent. Whether what you did in the past or old debts still exist, and when Li Xi's knife will flip to your page, that is another matter. This method of dismantling is actually more ruthless than a clean sweep. If it were a clean sweep, Xi's people would easily huddle together—since they are doomed anyway, they might as well carry it together. But now, the other side of the table has left you a path. At this moment, everyone is calculating their own accounts: if I cooperate now, can I keep this chair? If I continue to carry the burden for my old leader, will the Discipline Inspection Commission be knocking on my door next? This is what it means to dismantle a team. If the leak about Wang Zhonglin continues to develop, the signal it sends to officialdom will be very direct: entering the NPC does not mean old debts are sealed, and being given an arrangement does not mean the original layer of protection still exists. This is actually most damaging to those under Xi who have not yet had an incident. If Hu and Wen really want to dismantle Xi's team, they don't need to force everyone to openly defect, nor do they need to make everyone stand up and declare their position. As long as they dismantle the original contract of 'I protect you, you do things for me' that Xi had, the people below will naturally start to retreat.
So by this point, what the person in Zhongnanhai truly needs to protect can only be pulled back closer to himself. Enterprises cannot be protected across the board, Shenzhen cannot preserve its original networks, and even his own people who were already arranged may not be protected to the end. So what else is left in the end to make him believe that after he steps down, others will not continue digging deeper? There is only one last card left: Chairman of the Central Military Commission. In recent days, the versions of personnel arrangements have been multiplying. On October 11, the same X account that previously leaked the search of Wang Zhonglin's residence released another version, claiming that Xi's biggest demand right now is that all other positions are negotiable, but the post of Chairman of the Central Military Commission must be kept. Li Qiang and Cai Qi instead urged him to continue, and there even emerged claims about setting up a separate Party Chairman position and rearranging the seating order of the Standing Committee. These versions may not align with one another, but one point is becoming increasingly uniform: people are already discussing just how much he can ultimately retain, and no matter how the versions twist and turn, the hardest chair to negotiate is always the exact same one: Chairman of the Central Military Commission. On one hand, rumors circulate that the military's bottom line is refusing to let Xi continue to hold military power alone. On the other hand, rumors go that if Hu Jintao truly wants to pull the Military Commission back into collective operation and even reallocate positions for different factions, the details vary, but the knife's edge falls on the exact same spot: how much real power does the position of Chairman of the Central Military Commission actually still carry? According to the current system, the Chairman of the Central Military Commission is responsible for the overall work of the Central Military Commission and leads and commands the armed forces of the entire country. Systemically, this position is inherently the core of supreme military power. But when it comes to the transition stage, what truly needs to be calculated is not just a title. Whose orders does the General Office of the Military Commission run for? Whose command does the Joint Staff Department obey? How are personnel arranged? How much actual space do the Vice Chairmen hold? Whom do the guards and security systems ultimately recognize? These are the things that determine whether this chair is live with electricity or just left as a mere sign. Therefore, if Hu Jintao redesigns the military commission transition, I believe the most likely thing he will do is precisely dismantle what lies behind this position: the title can be kept, but the command chain must be rearranged; the chair can be sat in, but personnel and orders can no longer be decided by a single person alone. This is what is truly agonizing for Xi, because what he really wants from the Chairmanship of the Central Military Commission is an insurance policy. As long as the line of the gun remains connected to himself, others will have to think twice when digging up old accounts. Yet for Hu Jintao and the military, this is precisely what they fear the most. You say keeping the Chairman of the Central Military Commission is just for safety, but if the General Office, the Joint Staff, personnel, and security can still follow your orders, then it is no longer just insurance, but a hand that can flip the table at any moment. Therefore, in this final hurdle, what is truly being negotiated is not whether to give Xi face, but who holds the keys. If Hu Jintao truly wants to pull the Military Commission back into collective operation, he can give a chair; if the military truly wants to prevent another round of reversals, it will inevitably keep its eyes fixed on those keys underneath the chair. This also explains why those overseas versions of the transfer of power, no matter how they arrange Li Qiang, Cai Qi, and Ding Xuexiang, always end up circling back to the Chairman of the Central Military Commission. The Fifth Plenary Session has already been scheduled for October 26 to 29. Next, what I want to see most is which key moves first along the military line, how the Vice Chairmen are arranged, who gets replaced in the military commission organs, and which order first lets the outside world see how much electricity is actually left in the four words Chairman of the Central Military Commission. If these keys are moved before the opening of the Fifth Plenary Session, then what Xi clings to desperately in the end will probably be nothing more than an empty chair. Alright, that is all for today. Friends who like Jiang Feng Window, don't forget to follow, like, and share. We will continue watching in the next episode.