Jiang Jinquan was recently absent from a session of the CCP’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee, a month after reports circulated that his home had been searched. Jiang is Xi Jinping’s pen and served as deputy to Wang Huning during Wang’s tenure as director of the Central Policy Research Office.
Jiang Jinquan absent from the NPC Standing Committee session
CCP party media Xinhua reported that on the morning of Aug. 25, 2026, the first plenary meeting of the 24th session of the 14th NPC Standing Committee was held at the Great Hall in Beijing, chaired by NPC Chairman Zhao Leji. It was attended by 149 members of the Standing Committee. The 14th NPC Standing Committee originally had 175 members, and a number of them were absent.
Footage broadcast by the CCP mouthpiece CCTV showed several empty seats in the hall, among them the seat of Jiang Jinquan, a member of the NPC Standing Committee and a deputy chairman of its agriculture and rural affairs committee.
On Aug. 26, 2026, the X user “China Personnel Watch” posted that Jiang Jinquan had been absent from the Aug. 25 NPC Standing Committee meeting, and that he should have been seated between Jiang Tianliang, an associate professor at the Hunan Xiangxi National Vocational and Technical College, and Tang Weijian, a professor at the law school of Renmin University of China.
X users commented on the post. One wrote that it was strange the seat had been left empty, which suggested a temporary measure, and that if the authorities really intended to move against him the matter would be far more serious; that would only be done if there were a plan to settle accounts thoroughly with someone over a Cultural Revolution line or an ultra-leftist line, or to reopen that person’s old account over the constitutional amendment. Otherwise, the commenter asked, when would the turn of a think-tank figure who stays behind the scenes ever come? Another wrote, with a laugh, that the seat between Jiang Tianliang and Tang Weijian was empty.
Jiang Jinquan was Wang Huning’s deputy
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Public records show that Jiang Jinquan is 66 and comes from Xishui, Hubei province. He has served as deputy head of the organization division of the Hubei provincial party organization department, as a division-level researcher in the party-building group of the CCP Central Policy Research Office, as head of the office’s party-building research bureau, as a deputy director of the office and head of the secretarial group of the central party-building leading group, and as head of the discipline inspection group stationed at the state assets commission by the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
Wang Huning served as director of the Central Policy Research Office from October 2002 to October 2020.
Jiang Jinquan worked under Wang Huning for a long period. In April 2013 he was promoted to deputy director of the Central Policy Research Office, becoming Wang’s deputy. In 2017 he took part in drafting documents for the CCP’s 19th National Congress. In January 2018 he was transferred back from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection to the Central Policy Research Office and promoted to executive deputy director, and he accompanied CCP leader Xi Jinping to domestic events on a number of occasions.
In October 2020, Jiang Jinquan succeeded Wang Huning as director of the Central Policy Research Office. On Nov. 12, 2021, he set out what the CCP calls the content of the “two establishments” at a CCP Central Committee press conference.
In December 2025, Jiang Jinquan ceased to serve as director of the Central Policy Research Office and was succeeded by Tang Fangyu, then the office’s executive deputy director. Jiang was subsequently moved to a second-line position at the NPC, as a deputy chairman of its agriculture and rural affairs committee.
On May 12, 2026, the X account “Zhengjing Lu Shezhang” claimed that Jiang Jinquan had been taken away but was later released.
Later posts on X claimed that Jiang Jinquan’s home had been searched.
On July 22, 2026, Cai Shenkun, a US-based independent commentator, posted on X that Jiang Jinquan, the former director of the Central Policy Research Office under Wang Huning, had never held a substantive position of power and had done little more than take the lead in concocting Deng Xiaoping Theory, Jiang Zemin’s Three Represents and Hu Jintao’s Scientific Outlook on Development, and that his home being searched rather than his merely being questioned showed that the power struggle at the top of the CCP was growing stranger. Cai asked whether Jiang had taken part in some kind of secret activity he should not have, and whether there would be any effect on Wang Huning, saying both were worth watching.
In another post, Cai Shenkun offered this analysis: Jiang Jinquan was regarded as an important theoretical writer favored by Xi Jinping, but he had long been in conflict with Wang Huning. To align himself with Xi’s political outlook, Jiang published a large volume of theoretical articles promoting party-building theory for what the CCP calls the new era and stressing the necessity and legitimacy of “Xi Jinping’s thought on party building” and of “comprehensively governing the party with strict discipline.” At the same time he offered systematic criticism of the CCP’s party-building work before the 18th Party Congress. Those criticisms not only repudiated the party-building theory of the Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao periods but also, to a degree, indirectly repudiated Wang Huning, who had long been responsible for the CCP’s ideology and theory, which deepened the friction between them. Because of that conflict, Cai wrote, Jiang Jinquan failed to be elected to the Central Committee at the CCP’s 20th National Congress. For a sitting director of the Central Policy Research Office not to enter the Central Committee sent an unusual political signal.
Cai Shenkun wrote that the measures taken against Jiang Jinquan, including the search of his home, have left outside observers in the dark, and that the reasons behind them are complex and are not a matter of personal wrongdoing alone but are bound up with the contest for power at the top of the CCP. He wrote that Xi Jinping, facing pressure within the party, the government and the military after moving against Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, had been compelled to take political hedging measures aimed at suppressing dissenting voices inside those systems, and that the handling of figures such as Chen Xi was meant to announce to all that Xi is equally unsparing toward his own people.
Cai Shenkun said Xi Jinping’s purpose in doing so is to consolidate his own position and create the conditions for a smooth extension of his tenure at the CCP’s 21st National Congress.
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