The Cracks in Xi’s Armor: Signs of a Power Struggle in Beijing
Something strange is happening in the highest echelons of Chinese power, and it’s the kind of political drama that typically unfolds behind closed doors in Zhongnanhai. Xi Jinping, the man who has spent over a decade consolidating what seemed like unbreakable control over the world’s most populous nation, may be facing the most serious challenge to his authority since taking power.
The signs are subtle but unmistakable to those who know how to read the tea leaves of Chinese politics. Xi’s conspicuous absence from recent public events, his decision to skip the BRICS summit in Rio, and most tellingly, the mysterious disappearance of key military loyalists paint a picture of a leader whose grip on power may be slipping in ways that would have been unthinkable just months ago.
The General Who Vanished
At the center of this unfolding drama is General Wei Fenghe, Xi’s most trusted ally within the People’s Liberation Army. As the number two uniformed officer and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Wei represented Xi’s direct line of control over China’s vast military apparatus. Then, in March, he simply vanished from public view.
The rumors surrounding Wei’s fate are as dark as they are unverifiable—whispers of suicide at a military hospital in Beijing, speculation about whether Xi himself ordered his removal. But here’s what we know for certain: a general of Wei’s stature doesn’t just disappear without it signaling something profound about the balance of power within China’s leadership.
What makes this disappearance particularly significant is the broader pattern it represents. Wei isn’t the only Xi loyalist to find himself suddenly absent from the public stage. A cascade of military officers, once considered part of Xi’s inner circle, have been quietly sidelined or removed entirely. In the opaque world of Chinese politics, such systematic purges rarely happen by accident.
The Military’s Quiet Rebellion
Perhaps even more revealing than individual disappearances is what’s been appearing in PLA Daily, the military’s official propaganda organ. Since July of last year, the publication has run articles explicitly praising “collective leadership”—a direct rebuke to Xi’s increasingly authoritarian style of governance.
In the context of Chinese political discourse, this isn’t merely editorial commentary; it’s tantamount to open rebellion. The People’s Liberation Army doesn’t publish critiques of leadership without explicit approval from the very top of the military hierarchy. That these articles saw print suggests someone with considerable influence decided it was time to push back against Xi’s consolidation of power.
The finger of suspicion points toward General Zhang Youxia, the PLA’s most senior uniformed officer and chairman of the Central Military Commission. Zhang, who has long been viewed as less than enthusiastic about Xi’s leadership style, appears to be positioning himself as the voice of institutional resistance within the military. If the rumors are true, he may be doing more than just voicing dissent—he may be actively working to reshape China’s political landscape.
The Civilian Front
Xi’s challenges aren’t confined to the military sphere. Among civilian leadership, there are growing signs that his authority is being questioned in ways that would have been career suicide just a few years ago. The propaganda apparatus, once slavishly devoted to promoting Xi’s cult of personality, has subtly shifted its tone. References to collective decision-making have become more frequent, while the omnipresent Xi imagery has become somewhat less omnipresent.
These changes might seem minor to outside observers, but in China’s tightly controlled political environment, such shifts represent tectonic movements. The Communist Party’s propaganda machine doesn’t accidentally dial back its promotion of the supreme leader—it does so only when the supreme leader is no longer quite so supreme.
The Strongman’s Dilemma
What’s particularly striking about Xi’s current predicament is how it mirrors the challenges faced by his predecessors. Both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, despite their eventual historical stature, experienced periods of political exile and marginalization. The pattern suggests something inherent in China’s political system that eventually turns against strongman rule, regardless of how thoroughly that rule initially appears to be consolidated.
But Xi’s situation may be more precarious than those earlier power struggles. Unlike Mao or Deng, who could rely on revolutionary credentials and broad party support, Xi built his authority primarily through fear and systematic elimination of rivals. That foundation, while initially effective, may prove less durable when cracks begin to appear.
The Ultimate Question
The most intriguing rumors circulating in Beijing involve General Zhang allegedly interviewing potential civilian leaders for key party positions—essentially auditioning Xi’s potential successors. If true, this would represent an extraordinary inversion of China’s traditional power structure, with military leadership effectively determining civilian governance.
One particularly telling detail from these rumors involves a potential candidate being rejected specifically because he wouldn’t agree to increased military autonomy and budget expansion. This suggests that any transition of power wouldn’t simply be about replacing Xi, but about fundamentally restructuring the relationship between party and military authority.
Reading the Silence
Xi’s absence from the BRICS summit, while officially attributed to scheduling conflicts, fits a pattern of reduced public visibility that’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. In a political system where presence equals power, absence speaks volumes. When combined with the systematic removal of military loyalists and the shifting tone of official propaganda, these absences begin to look less like strategic withdrawal and more like political weakness.
The challenge for outside observers is that Chinese politics operates according to rules that are often invisible until they’re broken. What looks like business as usual can suddenly reveal itself as the prelude to dramatic change. The question isn’t whether Xi is facing challenges—the evidence suggests he clearly is. The question is whether those challenges represent temporary setbacks or the beginning of a fundamental shift in Chinese governance.
The Stakes
If Xi is indeed losing his grip on power, the implications extend far beyond China’s borders. His aggressive foreign policy, from Hong Kong to Taiwan to the South China Sea, has been intimately tied to his domestic political needs. A weakened Xi might be more dangerous internationally as he seeks to shore up nationalist support, or alternatively, his potential successors might pursue entirely different priorities.
What’s certain is that the image of Xi as an unassailable strongman is looking increasingly dated. Whether he can recover from this apparent political crisis, as Mao and Deng did from theirs, or whether China is heading toward its most significant leadership transition since the reform era began, remains to be seen. But the signs of instability are becoming too numerous to ignore, and the consequences of that instability are likely to reverberate far beyond Beijing’s corridors of power.
