On January 31, 2026, France's General Directorate for Internal Security arrested 4 suspects involved in the case in the southwestern department of Gironde, charging two of them, Chinese wireless engineers, with attempting to install a large antenna system to intercept Starlink and military satellite data.
The claim that DeepSeek trained a top-tier model for $5.6 million, along with its technical report, has upended Nvidia's $589.1 billion market capitalization.
On January 25, 2026, the front page of the PLA Daily convicted Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli over the filing of their case, with the charge being a serious violation of the system of the Chairman of the Military Commission assuming sole responsibility; overseas disclosures claim that the Ministry of National Defense belongs to the civilian system, and that it is the perpetrator convicting the victim.
The Ministry of National Defense announced that Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli are suspected of serious violations of discipline and law and have been placed under investigation; a PLA Daily editorial subsequently stated that the two seriously trampled upon and undermined the system of the CMC chairman's responsibility.
On January 24, 2026, the Ministry of National Defense announced that Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, Chief of the Joint Staff Department, were suspected of serious violations of discipline and law and had been placed under case investigation.
Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were officially announced to be investigated for “seriously trampling and undermining the Chairman’s responsibility system of the Central Military Commission”, indicating intense power struggles at the top.
Following the near-perfect U.S. military operation in Venezuela in early January, a large number of high-ranking PLA generals have disappeared, including top-level commanders. During the Two Sessions in early March, only 6 out of 26 generals appeared in public, and 4 out of 6 military members of the Central Military Commission have been purged in recent months, indicating severe political turmoil within the military.
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.
Reports that Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli had run into trouble broke the earlier private pact in Zhongnanhai and triggered subsequent political turmoil.
Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the CCP Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, member of the Central Military Commission, were involved in an incident at the Central Party School. Subsequently, the Ministry of National Defense officially announced their investigation on January 24, and on January 25, the front page of the PLA Daily convicted them of "severely trampling on the Chairman of the Central Military Commission responsibility system."
On January 24, 2026, the Ministry of National Defense announced that Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, Chief of the Joint Staff Department, are suspected of serious violations of discipline and law, and that the CPC Central Committee has decided to place both under investigation.
On January 24, 2026, the Chinese Communist Party's Ministry of National Defense announced that Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, Chief of the Joint Staff Department, are suspected of serious violations of discipline and law and have been placed under investigation.
Zhang Youxia was arrested in December last year. More than half a year has passed since the related case came to light, drawing widespread attention from the outside world.
According to sources outside the Great Firewall, Zhang Youxia, the first vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, the Chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, were both in trouble and arrested on January 20.
After Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were absent from the opening ceremony of the seminar for provincial and ministerial-level officials on January 20, 2026, reports emerged that they had run into trouble. On January 24, the Ministry of National Defense announced that both had been placed under case investigation.
The UK Labour Government has officially approved China's construction of a large embassy at the Royal Mint Court mint near the Tower of London, sparking concerns among overseas dissidents regarding intelligence gathering and intimidation.
An overseas source inside the system claimed that on January 20, 2026, while a provincial- and ministerial-level seminar was in session at the Central Party School, a secret force raised by Wang Xiaohong, disguised as Party School staff, carried out a surprise attack on Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli; this version cannot be verified, but neither of the two has appeared in public since.
On January 20, 2026, the Office of the Central Special Mechanism for Combating Formalism and Reducing Burdens at the Grassroots Level, together with the General Office of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, announced: from 2022 to 2024, 34 above-designated-size industrial enterprises in Shuangjiang County, Lincang City, Yunnan Province, cumulatively falsified their reported output value by 3.5 billion yuan.
Rumor has it that on January 20, 2026, the day an incident involving Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli occurred at the Central Party School, Cai Qi briefly took control of the two men: Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin and Director of the Central Guard Bureau Zhou Hongxu.
On January 19, 2026, the National Bureau of Statistics announced: at the end of 2025, the country's total population was 1,404.89 million; during the year, 7.92 million were born and 11.31 million died, a decrease of 3.39 million, marking negative growth for the fourth consecutive year; the population aged 60 and above was 323 million, accounting for about 23%.
Official media reports on January 14, 2026 showed that Tang Fangyu has succeeded Jiang Jinquan as director of the Central Policy Research Office; Jiang Jinquan is currently deputy director of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress.
In January 2026, the U.S. Department of Commerce revised its rules, changing exports of Nvidia H200 chips to China to case-by-case review; the Chinese side subsequently still has not approved the purchase.
On January 7, 2026, a working group from the Ministry of Public Security escorted Chen Zhi, a ringleader of a cross-border gambling and fraud syndicate, back to China from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The Ministry of Public Security announced the news on January 8.
There have been claims that generals including Li Zuocheng proposed a plan to bring the 38th Army's heavy units into Beijing, impose air traffic control, and declare martial law in the capital, only to be blocked by Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao; this claim has no public reports to corroborate it.
In January of this year, Wen Jiabao personally met with Foreign Minister Wang Yi several times, demanding the clearance of internal hazards within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the covert pipelines laundering money for red families.
Cambodia announced the arrest of Tai Kun Chen Zi, one of the country's biggest crime bosses, who was subsequently repatriated to China, sparking a nationwide crackdown on online fraud and illegal gambling.
At the end of January 2026, Zhang Youxia, the Chinese Communist Party's highest-ranking active-duty general and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, was suddenly taken down, becoming the latest example of a military purge under Xi Jinping's tenure.
In 2025, the net interest margin of China's commercial banks dropped to 1.4%, with the Bank of China at 1.26%, and net interest income experienced negative growth for two consecutive years.
From January to May 2026, the budget deficit of the Russian Federation reached 6.01 trillion rubles, accounting for 2.6% of GDP, about 1.6 times the planned full-year deficit of 3.79 trillion rubles.
According to a report by Economic Observer, from January to February 2026, the nationwide total volume of voluntary blood donations fell 9.8% year-on-year; the number of blood donation visits by college students dropped from 2.366 million in 2023 to 1.06 million in 2025.
Ministry of Finance data: From January to May 2026, revenue at the central level of local government fund budgets was 104.76 billion yuan, down 23.2% year-on-year, of which income from the transfer of state-owned land use rights was 80.48 billion yuan, down 28.7% year-on-year.
In the plot directed by Iran to assassinate Iranian-American human rights activist Ali Nejad, Carlisle Rivera was sentenced on January 28, 2026 to 15 years, and Jonathan Loadholt on May 27 to 10 years.
In the first seven months of this year, real estate development investment plummeted 19.2% year-on-year, with newly started floor space, floor space sold, and sales revenue all falling sharply across the board.
Starting in 2026, banks in China will need to verify the remitter's information for any one-time overseas remittance exceeding 5,000 RMB, further raising and encrypting the barriers against foreign currency purchase and capital outflow.