Xi’s Power Move Backfires Inside the CCP

Two of the PLA's highest-ranking commanders were taken down, and investigations were announced almost immediately. At the same time, she continued to receive visiting heads of state in Beijing. To many observers, that looks like a successful power move. But inside the CCP, the reaction has been very different. What's missing is unified support. Instead, what followed was silence. No public loyalty pledges from key officials. No coordinated statements from the military branches or theater commands. And no visible backing from party's top organs. And in a system like CCP's, silence is dangerous. That's where Xi Jinping's real predicament begins. So let me start with the first problem, legality. So Jiang Yuxia is a member of the Politburo. Under CCP's own rules, removing a Politburo member requires approval by the full Politburo. Usually a 25-person body, now 24 people. That step never happened. Xi Jinping did not consult the Politburo. He did not consult the Politburo Standing Committee either. That alone already places his action outside the party's formal framework. Now comes the second problem, and this one is even more serious. The Central Military Commission. Jiang Yuxia is not just a Politburo member, he's also the vice chairman of the CMC. According to rules, investigating or removing a CMC member requires approval by the CMC itself. And here's the catch. That was impossible. So there were only four people left. That's Xi Jinping, Jiang Yuxia, Zhang Shimin, and Liu Zhenli. If they were to have a vote, I mean, Jiang Yuxia and Liu Zhenli were obviously or are obviously not going to vote to arrest themselves. Which means that Xi Jinping simply did not have the votes to have him removed. And he knew this. Xi Jinping understood very clearly that if he followed normal procedures, he had no chance of removing Jiang Yuxia. The Politburo wouldn't approve it, and the CMC couldn't approve it either. And that's exactly why he chose not to follow the rules at all. And that's exactly where the problem begins. And in my opinion, he took a major gamble. And that silence is significant. It changes everything. Without collective authorization, what happened becomes a personal act by Xi Jinping. Either an illegal abduction or an illegal assassination of Jiang Yuxia. And that means the entire arrest and investigation lacks procedural legitimacy. And this is exactly the excuse many Jiang Yuxia followers and sympathizers, those in the military and those in the party are now using to engage in soft resistance. So let me be very clear here. They are not necessarily defending Jiang Yuxia's innocence. They're challenging how Xi Jinping did it. And for Xi Jinping, this creates an urgent problem. So Xi Jinping now has to retroactively fix the missing procedure and therefore legitimize his actions. And that is why the January 31st Politburo meeting mattered so much. If the Politburo had publicly announced collective support for removing General Jiang Yuxia, Xi Jinping could claim party backing. Then he's legit. If not, his action to take down the two generals is still illegal. But the Politburo meeting did not produce anything about the removal of Jiang Yuxia. The retroactive fix didn't happen. Xinhua released no video, no photos, no visuals at all about the meeting. And not a single mention of Jiang Yuxia or the generals in the press reports. Which tells us one thing very clearly. The Politburo did not reach consensus to back Xi Jinping's action. Now during the days when Xi Jinping's power was unchallenged, this would be unthinkable. He gets away with everything he wanted. But this time it did not happen. Here's why this is truly alarming for Xi Jinping. Because this Politburo was handpicked by Xi Jinping himself just three years ago. It's overwhelmingly made up of his own loyalists. If even this Politburo cannot reach consensus to support him, then Xi Jinping's grip on power is in serious trouble. Again, officials are not openly claiming Jiang Yuxia is innocent. They're not openly defending Jiang Yuxia. They're saying the process to arrest him was illegal. And without a clear documented Politburo decision, without meeting records that formalize that decision, Xi Jinping is held liable to explain what has happened to Jiang Yuxia, where the general is. And until that happens, senior officials will wait, watch, stay silent, and do nothing. This is where Xi Jinping is stuck. This isn't just awkward, it's dangerous. No matter how ruthless he is, there is a ceiling that he cannot break. He could flip the table, but he cannot tear down the house. He cannot abolish the Politburo or its standing committee. In the end, he still needs others to stand with him. And right now, they're not. And this silence isn't really about rules on paper. Procedure is just an excuse. The real issue is trust, people's lost confidence in him. Everyone understands one thing very clearly. Procedures can be fixed later, but broken trust or lost confidence cannot. So to understand why so many officials are choosing silence, we need to look at Xi Jinping's own track record with the people who helped him rise. And this leads directly to Xi's deeper problem. Leaders who discard allies once they've served their purpose do not hold stable power for long. Over time, loyalty evaporates and insiders quietly pull away. If you look back at Xi Jinping's rise over the past decade, he has been ruthless to all of his major helpers. Let me give you a few examples. The first person is Hu Jintao. The former party leader and Xi Jinping's predecessor was instrumental in elevating Xi and Hu fought hard to help him consolidate authority. At the time, Xi Jinping was fighting with Bo Xilai and Jiang Zemin's faction and Hu Jintao supported Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping even faced assassination attempts from the Jiang Zemin faction and Hu Jintao mobilized the troops to protect him. Yet at the 20th Party Congress, Xi Jinping deceived Hu Jintao on personnel decisions and kicked everyone from Hu's faction out of the Politburo when Hu was finding it out in his folder at the meeting. He was publicly humiliated and escorted out of the hall in front of the entire world. And then there was Wang Qishan, who is a princeling, who is the son-in-law of a former president of China. Now, during the first few years of Xi Jinping's rule, Wang was Xi's right-hand man carrying out his anti-corruption campaign, which was a very dangerous job to do. And Wang dismantled rival factions and cleared the path for Xi's dominance. Today, Wang's position is increasingly precarious. All of Wang Qishan's former aides have been investigated. The man who once shielded Xi Jinping can now barely protect himself. And then the next on the list is General Liu Yuan. The princeling heavyweight helped Xi Jinping push anti-corruption deep into the military, taking down key anti-Xi generals. During that period, Liu Yuan reportedly survived four assassination attempts from the Jiang Zemin faction. Once his mission was complete and Xi Jinping took full control, Liu was quietly removed from the center of power and parked at the National People's Congress for semi-retirement. And finally, Zhang Youxia. The two were childhood friends. Zhang was crucial in securing military backing for Xi Jinping's third term at the 20th Party Congress. Without Zhang Youxia's support, Xi Jinping wouldn't be where he is today. Plus, Zhang has no ambition in overtaking Xi Jinping's power. He just has different views on Russia and Taiwan. If Xi Jinping wanted to get rid of Zhang, he could have persuaded Zhang to retire gracefully, and Zhang likely would have accepted. Instead, Xi Jinping did the worst thing one can ever do to a friend. He had two junior incompetent officers, He Weidong and Miao Hua, to monitor and intimidate General Zhang. What followed is now history. And then there's Li Keqiang. You all know the former premier, who was only a scholar with no real ambition to challenge Xi Jinping. For years, Li carried the burden of managing China's collapsing economy, often forced to take responsibility for policies he did not design and could not change. And he retired. He was forced into retirement before the official retirement age. And then came his sudden death. Whether one believes foul play was involved or not, the message received by party insiders was chilling. Even a former premier can be erased quietly without explanation once he's no longer useful. In fact, today I heard that Li Keqiang's mysterious death in 2023 was the final straw that pushed Zhang Youxia to go against Xi Jinping, to fight for his own survival. Because the former premier, Li Keqiang, kept speaking out at their high-level meetings against Xi Jinping's idea of a military takeover of Taiwan. Now Zhang Youxia shares Li Keqiang's view on Taiwan. So when Li Keqiang died, Zhang Youxia felt imminent threat. And that's the moment when he decided to do something about it. But when you really think about it, Li Keqiang and Zhang Youxia cannot be the only officials in the CCP who are against war. And think about how they would feel at this moment. So the above cases help answer a question many people are asking. Why have the military theater commands, party organs, and core bureaucratic systems refuse to come out forcefully in support of Xi Jinping during this crisis? The answer is very simple. They know that pledging loyalty to Xi Jinping is dangerous. They've watched what has happened to people who stand close to him. And they refuse to take that risk. So they stay on the sidelines. They remain silent. And that silence doesn't require coordination. It reflects a shared calculation.