军权 · Full chronicle and history

From late 2015 to 2016, the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League faced reforms, its organizational staffing was streamlined, and its budget was significantly cut, weakening the Youth League faction's ability to cultivate young cadres.

On September 21, official announcements stated that Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and the military due to serious violations of discipline and law.

It was officially announced that Xi Jinping will pay a state visit to the United States from September 23 to 25, with an itinerary including a tour of the National Archives and attendance at a state dinner.

On September 21, the CCP Politburo meeting reviewed and approved disciplinary decisions for Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, both of whom were expelled from the Party and the military, and their suspected criminal matters were transferred to the military procuratorial organ for investigation and prosecution.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Xi Jinping was absent from the BRICS summit banquet due to illness, and Wang Yi attended on his behalf.

The US Department of State has approved a foreign military sale of air defense systems to Ukraine, including S-300 clone missiles, with a total estimated value of up to $2.68 billion.

Following Wang Zhongwei's protest in Washington, D.C. against Xi Jinping's visit to the US, his family in China was harassed by the police under the guise of persuasion.

On the final day of the Russian parliamentary elections, the skies over Moscow were hit by a large-scale drone attack. An oil refinery in the Moscow Oblast caught fire, billowing black smoke, and the area near the Kremlin was also affected.

Between late 2025 and early 2026, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were plotted against and confirmed to be taken down. Subsequently, in late August 2026, the National People's Congress explicitly relieved Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli of their positions as deputies to the NPC and members of the Central Military Commission, among other posts, drawing external attention to the rift between the military and the central leadership.

On September 12, the central government approved the appointment of Li Qiang as a member of the Standing Committee of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee and Secretary of the Dalian Municipal Party Committee. On the same day, the former Dalian Municipal Party Secretary, Xiong Maoping, stepped down from his positions as Deputy Secretary of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee, member of the Provincial Standing Committee, and Secretary of the Dalian Municipal Party Committee. Li Qiang previously served as the Mayor of Dalian.

On the tenth day after the disaster at the Gyirong Port border, Nepalese rescue forces successfully rescued Chinese worker Lu Haitao from a tunnel buried by a mudslide, demonstrating the scale and persistence of local rescue operations.

Desmond Shum, author of Red Roulette, published a long article in September 2026, publicly detailing for the first time his interactions, reading groups, and the last meeting with Ling Gu before the accident, while analyzing the impact of the car crash on Chinese politics and Xi Jinping's consolidation of power.

During the mudslide disaster relief efforts on the China-Nepal border, the Nepali side rescued and transferred 2,697 people on August 30 alone, including 72 Chinese citizens. Nepal subsequently announced a cumulative total of 13,396 people rescued and transferred, with over 25,000 personnel from the army, police, and armed police participating in the rescue. These figures have been used to compare against the lower rescue input and results from the Chinese side.

On August 28, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress issued an announcement declaring the removal of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli from their respective positions.

In late August, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress removed Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli from their State Central Military Commission positions.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced that Jiang Hongwei, Deputy Secretary of the Heilongjiang Provincial Discipline Inspection Commission and Deputy Director of the Provincial Supervisory Commission, has fallen from power. This is seen as a key breakthrough by the anti-Xi alliance attempting to pry open old accounts from the period when Li Zhanshu governed Heilongjiang.

After accompanying Xi Jinping to receive Myanmar leader Min Aung Hlaing, Cai Qi has successively missed important diplomatic events such as receiving Cambodia's Hun Sen and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, triggering external speculation that he has gone missing or lost power.

At the closing ceremony of a major CCP meeting, former General Secretary Hu Jintao was escorted out of the venue by security guards in full view of the public, marking the complete bankruptcy of political norms such as inter-generational succession designation.

At the closing session of the 20th CCP Congress, political successors left by Hu Jintao—including Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, and Hu Chunhua—failed to enter the new Politburo Standing Committee, while Xi Jinping successfully secured his reappointment as General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

The National People's Congress passed a constitutional amendment abolishing term limits for the president.

Driven and spearheaded by Li Zhanshu, the First Session of the 13th National People's Congress passed the decision to amend the constitution, removing the limit that the president of the PRC could serve no more than two consecutive terms.

The first Politburo meeting after the 19th National Congress adopted relevant regulations requiring Politburo members to submit written performance reports to the CCP Central Committee and the General Secretary annually, further strengthening supreme centralization of power.

In the list of Standing Committee members announced at the 1st Plenary Session of the 19th CCP Central Committee, Hu Chunhua failed to enter the Standing Committee. Although Li Keqiang and Wang Yang were included, the succession plan laid out by Hu Jintao in 2012 has been significantly compromised.

In July 2017, Sun Zhengcai was suddenly investigated and expelled from the CCP. He and Hu Chunhua were once seen as candidates for the sixth-generation leadership; his downfall marked a turning point for the succession plans Hu Jintao had left for himself.

In 2015, former Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Guo Boxiong was investigated, further consolidating Xi Jinping's power within the military.

In 2014, former Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Xu Caihou was investigated, marking the beginning of Xi Jinping's purge of Jiang Zemin's influence in the military.

On the second day after the conclusion of the First Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, Hu Jintao stated at an enlarged meeting of the Military Commission that Xi Jinping was a qualified General Secretary and Chairman of the Military Commission. Xi Jinping, in turn, highly praised Hu Jintao for voluntarily stepping down as Chairman of the Military Commission, marking the official completion of the power transition.

The First Plenary Session of the 18th CCP Central Committee has concluded. Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan, Wang Qishan, and Zhang Gaoli have become the new members of the Politburo Standing Committee. Among them, Li Keqiang is the only representative of the Hu Jintao faction, while the Jiang Zemin faction holds the majority.

On the eve of the 18th National Congress, retired party elders expressed strong opposition to Wang Yang and Li Yuanchao, ultimately blocking both from the Standing Committee, which allowed the Jiang Zemin faction to hold a majority of seats at the Standing Committee level.

Following Ling Plan's departure, Li Zhanshu officially assumed office as the Director of the CCP Central Committee Office on September 1, 2012, stepping into the core power circle of the General Office in advance.

In the early morning of March 18, 2012, Ling Gu, the only son of Ling Jihua, died in a Ferrari crash near the Baofusi Bridge on Beijing's North Fourth Ring Road. Two young women in the car were severely injured, triggering high-level political maneuvering and intensive news censorship.

On March 15, 2012, Bo Xilai was dismissed from his post as secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the CCP, and three days later Ling Gu died in a car accident in Beijing. These two incidents became critical turning points in the restructuring of the top leadership power structure of the Chinese Communist Party on the eve of the 18th National Congress.

In the spring of 2012, the son of Ling Jihua was involved in a Ferrari crash. The cover-up and aftermath surrounding the accident quickly escalated into a political scandal, causing Ling Jihua to lose his chance to enter the Politburo before the 18th National Congress and leading to his removal from the General Office of the CCP Central Committee.