The Fourth Plenary Session has concluded, and the communique’s content is unremarkable with no waves. Xi Jinping has not lost power, and neither Wang nor Hu has returned to the center.

At the same time, no additional members have been added to the Military Commission, and the 47 absent Central Committee members (historically rare) have only been partially filled with 11, leaving 36 vacancies.

The only major change is that Military Commission member Zhang Shengmin has been promoted to Vice Chairman of the Military Commission. It’s unknown whose person he is, but given that he helped take down 9 generals, he is highly likely to be closely related to the main figure in the Military Commission (Zhang Youxia). And he has not entered the Central Political Bureau either.

Here’s how I interpret the outcome of the Fourth Plenary Session: a ceasefire along the line.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that there was never any anti-Xi faction in the military—it was all just wild speculation. But as for me, starting from a week ago, looking at the CCP’s dynamics over the past year, after reviewing back and forth, my conclusion is that it does exist, it truly exists, and this time they tried to force a showdown to bring Xi down, but the goal was not achieved.

Trump really wants both sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict to agree to a “ceasefire along the line,” but Putin disagrees. In the CCP’s internal war, both sides have agreed.

Does a ceasefire along the line mean everything is fine?

No, it means endless future troubles.

12:20 PM · Oct 23, 2025

The string of purges in the PLA suggests an existential struggle between the old and new guard. And now there’s a clear winner.

On October 17, China announced the ouster from the Communist Party of General He Weidong, the second-highest ranking officer in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and a member of the 24-man Politburo, for corruption. His dismissal, and that of Admiral Miao Hua, are shocking. 

President Xi Jinping had helicoptered He into the Central Military Commission (CMC) just three years ago and promoted Miao Hua in 2017 to rejuvenate the leadership of the military high command. Now He has become the first CMC vice chairman to be removed from power in over four decades. Moreover, the ouster follows an unprecedented number of dismissals and disappearance of senior military officers since mid-2023. In fact, amid the successive ousters, the CMC is now down to just four members.

My assessment is that this is a purge triggered by a power struggle between the CMC’s first-ranked vice chairman, Zhang Youxia, and the ambitious up-from-the-troops ordinary soldiers, He Weidong and Miao Hua.  

Zhang represents the old, princeling elite of the PLA. His father was a Red Army hero of the 1920s and 1930s and was equal in stature to Xi Jinping’s father. Zhang Youxia built his military career on being a hero during the 1979 border war against the Vietnamese. My friends who have met him tell me he is a tough old soldier in the Maoist tradition: profane, entitled, and intolerant.  

PLA General Zhang Youxia, pictured here during a 2017 meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, seems to have emerged victorious in the power struggles within China’s military.

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