Epoch Times - These Are the Signs Xi Is Losing Power in China

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Aug. 16, 2025 - Epoch Times

02:55

These Are the Signs Xi Is Losing Power in China | Gordon Chang

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	I think that Xi Jinping has lost control of the Chinese military, and I think that he has lost some influence among civilian CCP leaders.
	Start with the military.
	His number one guy in the military, his number one loyalist, his hatchet man, General He We Weidong, has not been seen in public since March 11th, after the two sessions.
	And the New York Times article three, four days ago, and just about everybody says, well, Xi Jinping has been sacking his own loyalists.
	And that's possible, but I don't think that it is right.
	And the reason is that from July 9th of last year, there have been a series of articles in PLA Daily, the main propaganda organ of the Chinese military, that have praised collective leadership, quote unquote.
	That's a direct challenge to Xi Jinping's one-man rule style.
	And so these articles were written by people who are aligned with General Zhou Yangsha, who is the number one uniformed officer in the military, who is known to not be on particularly good terms with Xi Jinping.
	Now, General Zhang is, he's the number one vice chairman of the Communist Party Central Military Commission.
	And I believe that he was responsible for getting rid of General He Wei Dong and some other Xi Jinping loyalists recently.
	This indicates the balance of information that we have.
	And by the way, we're guessing here, of course.
	But the balance of information is that Xi Jinping no longer controls the Chinese military because General Zhang does.
	On the civilian side of things, it's less clear.
	For basically five weeks, Xi Jinping just dropped out of propaganda.
	He dropped out of sight for the most part.
	Those times he did appear in the media, he was appeared in roles which showed that he had been diminished in stature.
	Beginning about, let's say, the second week in June, he has had a more prominent role in media.
	We also saw the disappearance of a senior Chinese diplomat, Liu Zhao Chao, and we don't know what's going on there.
	This follows, of course, the disappearances of other civilian leaders.
	Again, this is really murky.
	Not all of it points to Xi Jinping losing influence, but some of it does.
	We will know a lot more after the fourth plenum in October, because I think we will see a number of things occur.
	So it's sort of like stay tuned, but I think that there is intense infighting in this regime, and that has all sorts of consequences for our dealing with China and how we can work with Beijing.

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