TL;DR: Driving the news
Last week in Beijing, China’s Communist Party gathered for its Fourth Plenum. The Plenum was held to outline national development goals for the next five years. But what reverberated beyond the official rhetoric was not what was said-but who all were missing.
As per a Bloomberg report, just 168 of the 205 full Central Committee members attended, the lowest turnout since the Cultural Revolution. The cause? Likely Xi Jinping’s expanding purges-especially within the military.
But looming over this meeting, and over China’s future, is a question no one in the room dares speak aloud:
Who will lead China after Xi Jinping?Why it matters
- At 72, Xi has ruled China for 13 years-abolishing term limits, purging rivals, and eliminating any successor-in-waiting. According to NYT, he’s amassed more power than any leader since Mao.
- But personalist regimes carry a built-in risk: No clear succession plan = instability.
- “The immediate political and economic crises that he faces could end up continually outweighing the priority of getting around to executing a succession plan,” said Neil Thomas of the Asia Society Policy Institute to NYT.
- In an authoritarian state like China, where the leader is the system, the absence of a designated heir threatens economic certainty, political continuity-and potentially, peace.
He runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist -- smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There's nobody in Hollywood like this guy.
Donald Trump on Xi Jinping
Zoom in: Plenum meets purge
Just before the plenum, Xi purged nine top military officials, including a CMC vice-chair and two ex-defense ministers. It was his largest-ever single-day military purge, according to Bloomberg.
The officers all had overlapping histories-many from the Eastern Theater Command, which oversees operations around Taiwan. That detail wasn’t lost on analysts.
“That so many of the purged officers worked together suggests a shared scandal,” Neil Thomas told Bloomberg. “But what remains unclear is the trigger: bribery, disobeying orders, or more direct criticism of Xi’s rule.”Xi replaced one of the top purged generals with Zhang Shengmin, a long-serving loyalist and anti-corruption enforcer who now holds the number two military post. Zhang’s rise shows Xi is preparing for control-not transition.
“There is no one better to succeed as the military’s new political and personnel chief than its reigning discipline tsar,” Wen-Ti Sung told Reuters.
Between the lines
Xi’s purge-first approach reflects a deeper fear: naming a successor creates a rival center of power.That fear isn’t unfounded. Xi’s father was purged by Mao. Xi rose through the party during the post-Tiananmen years, when infighting nearly ripped the Communist Party apart.
Yet each year he waits, the pool of potential successors shrinks. His closest allies in the Politburo Standing Committee are now in their 60s or older-too old to rule through the 2030s. Meanwhile, promising younger officials-like Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining-lack the battlefield or provincial credentials that Chinese leaders have typically needed.
And with every purge, Xi removes not just threats-but potential successors.
The big picture: The Mao-Deng model
Xi’s playbook echoes Mao and Deng, both of whom delayed naming a successor until they were forced to, and cycled through multiple candidates before settling.
Mao’s heir, Hua Guofeng, lasted just a few years. Deng pushed aside two presumed successors before finally settling on Jiang Zemin-then spent years pulling strings behind the scenes.
“China’s military, not civilian elites, often serve as kingmakers,” wrote Foreign Affairs. Mao’s heir only survived because senior generals backed him-until Deng convinced them otherwise.
Xi has studied this history. According to Foreign Affairs, he knows the “Cultural Revolution” was triggered by Mao’s late-stage power struggle. Xi seems determined to control his exit in ways Mao and Deng could not.
But he hasn’t moved to elevate a viable successor.
China is winning the trade war. It has learned to escalate and retaliate as effectively as America. And it is experimenting with its own extraterritorial trade rules, thus changing the path of the world economy.
Economist in Why China is winning the trade war
The PLA’s kingmaker role
In China’s opaque political system, one institution stands just behind the curtain: the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).Outsiders often misread the PLA as apolitical. It isn’t.
According to Foreign Affairs, the military doesn’t directly pick China’s leaders, but it can make or break them. Deng Xiaoping understood this. So did Mao. And Xi, too, has spent over a decade reshaping the military through purges, loyalty tests, and ideological indoctrination.
Flashback: 1979’s “useful” war
Succession battles in China have spilled into foreign policy before. Foreign Affairs notes that Deng Xiaoping used the 1979 invasion of Vietnam to assert military control-and solidify power over Mao’s heir.
Now, Xi has told the PLA to be ready for a Taiwan operation by 2027-the same year a new leadership cohort is expected.
However, Xi could become risk-averse, fearing that failure over Taiwan would destroy his legacy and cripple his successor.
Either path is dangerous. If the military is politicized-or intelligence assessments become distorted by loyalty signals-miscalculation becomes more likely.
Ideological roadblock
- According to Kevin Rudd’s book "On Xi Jinping", ideology is central to the succession puzzle. Xi isn’t just preserving power-he’s institutionalizing a vision.
- “Ideology is not window dressing; it is the operating system,” Rudd writes.
- Xi’s "Sinified Marxism" is now party doctrine. His ideological line has been codified in textbooks, enforced in party schools, and framed as the only legitimate path to China’s future. Leading party theorists now pair Xi with Mao as the two great ideological architects of the CCP.
- “Only by vigorously upgrading our own economic power, scientific and technological strength, and overall national power can we win the strategic initiative,” declared a recent party report.
- This “ideological narrowing,” as Rudd calls it, makes it even harder to find a successor who is both ideologically pure and politically credible.
To some, Xi is the second coming of Mao, having accumulated near-total power and bent the state to his will; to others, Xi’s power is so tenuous that he is perpetually at risk of disgruntled elites ousting him in a coup.
China against China in Foreign Affairs
What’s next
- The next major opportunity to signal succession will come at the 2027 Party Congress, when new Politburo and Standing Committee members will be introduced.
- By then, Xi will be 74. If he wants a successor ready by 2032, he must start elevating someone younger now.
- Yet none of the current Standing Committee members fit the bill. Chen Jining, at 61, is young-but lacks elite standing. Others like Cai Qi and Ding Xuexiang are too old or untested. That suggests either:
- A surprise dark horse, someone younger and loyal but outside the current elite tier
- Or a power vacuum, where multiple factions, including the military, compete behind closed doors
- The best-case scenario, experts say, is for Xi to select a deputy who quietly builds influence-similar to how Deng protected Jiang Zemin. But that would require Xi to trust someone else, and there’s no sign he’s ready.
The bottom line
So far, China is winning or at least matching Donald Trump's trade war with tariffs and sanctions. It's likely to continue to do so whether there is a US-China trade deal or not.
In fact, Xi seems to have found way to deal with Trump's tantrums.
But Xi's refusal to name a successor or allow space for alternative power centers is a high-stakes gamble. His own legacy-and the stability of a nuclear-armed superpower-depends on how he exits the stage.
For now, China is ruled by a man who sees history through a Marxist-lens, draws lessons from dynasties and purges, and believes his vision must survive him.
That vision, increasingly, is one without an heir - at least so far.
(With inputs from agencies)