For four days, from Monday, October 20, to Thursday, October 23, around 315 of the highest-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres met at the official Jingxi Hotel in western Beijing to discuss the country’s next five-year plan. The talks focused on China’s technological self-sufficiency in the face of American restrictions, modernizing its military and supporting domestic consumption to stabilize the economy.
However, a key piece of information was not to be found among the officials present at the closed-door political meeting, but rather in the number of figures absent: 16% of the 376 members and deputies of the CCP Central Committee, who were appointed in 2022, when the party was already under President Xi Jinping’s absolute control, were missing. The only reasons that can justify missing a CCP plenary session are health issues or purges.
Such purges have only intensified, even though Xi, who has headed the state, the CCP and the army for 13 years, has had ample time to eliminate any factions that could resist him. He has, in fact, excelled at this task like no other leader since the end of Maoism.
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