It’s Friday, and Xi Jinping Still Has a Job

I think well of Gordon Chang, a longtime China expert. I do think Chang’s righteous opposition to the Chinese Communist Party makes him a bit more pessimistic about the future of the Chinese regime than the facts warrant. Way back in 2001, Chang wrote a book entitled The Coming Collapse of China, which predicted that the CCP would fall from power by the year 2011. The following year, he conceded that he had missed the mark with that prediction, but argued that the Chinese regime was still on its way to a darker future: “We will witness either an [economic] crash or, more probably, a Japanese-style multi-decade decline.” China’s economy has definitely had some intense ups and downs since then — Covid, lockdowns, steel overproduction — but it’s still the second-largest economy in the world, when ranked by GDP.

I mention all this because at the beginning of the week, Chang wrote about some abrupt changes in the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army, and speculated that Xi Jinping was in serious trouble:

• Tellingly, the most senior of the nine officers axed on the 17th was General He Weidong, the second-ranked vice chairman of the Commission and Xi Jinping’s No. 1 loyalist in the PLA. The general had gained prominence as Xi’s top enforcer in the military.
• Gen. He was not the only officer who backed Xi and has now been taken out of the military’s leadership ranks. Moreover, it is difficult to identify any Xi adversary who was purged in the last 18 months.
• It is unlikely, at a time Xi Jinping appears to be fighting for political survival, that he would remove his most important supporter in the military. It is far more probable that Xi has lost control of the People’s Liberation Army, especially because the removals strengthen Gen. Zhang, Xi’s adversary.
• China, by Thursday, could have a new leader. Or a new round of purges.

Now, I’ve heard the various reports of tension between Xi and the Chinese military leadership for a while now. The top levels of the Chinese government are extremely secretive, and it’s tough for those of us on the outside to get a good read on what’s really going on.

That’s one of the reasons that when I was on my reporting trip to India, I asked Jayadeva Ranade, considered by many to be India’s top expert on everything related to the People’s Republic of China, about Xi Jinping’s hold on power. Ranade was pretty skeptical that Xi faced any real worries about staying in power. “He’s in the saddle,” Ranade said. “He doesn’t see any opposition to him within the system right now, or within the PLA. I don’t get that feeling — maybe occasional rumbles, but nothing too serious.”

Now, the removal of China’s second-most senior general and eight other high-ranking military commanders is undoubtedly a sign of a purge and some sort of sudden transition. But the idea that this is leading to a coup, or attempted coup against Xi . . . well, we just don’t see any evidence of this yet.

And as much as every supporter of freedom has a long list of reasons to want to see Xi Jinping no longer in power . . . the notion of an attempted military coup in a country with an estimated 600 nuclear weapons has its own risks and dangers.