China Update July 2025
by David Archibald
5 July 2025
The regime change in China isn’t clear cut. The four forces at work are:
- Xi and his faction are still fighting a rearguard action. For example, it was announced that Xi would review a military parade on 3rd September for the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2. Dating an action after important political meetings makes it just a little more difficult to change things. The party’s propaganda organs no longer talk about the importance of ‘Xi Jinping thought’ though, or of Xi being the ‘core’ of the party. This is like dropping acknowledgement of country to begin meetings in Australia.
- General Zhang, who started the coup against Xi after Xi was hospitalised for a stroke in August last year, has to remove Xi from the leadership or be killed himself. Zhang has taken control of all the instruments of state security — the military, the People’s Armed Police and the security service, and is continuing to purge Xi’s faction from the PLAAF and the PLAN (air force and navy).
- The party elders want the process of change to be legitimate in order to preserve the party’s image and that requires Xi to sign off on his resignation. Seemingly, this is the reason why Zhang can’t act decisively and bring the matter to a conclusion. Zhang doesn’t want the leadership himself, but has to make sure he lives through the process.
- The red second generation, the party princelings who became fabulously wealthy through the corruption of the last 30 years, moved a lot of their wealth out of China for safekeeping. The lesson they learnt from the Ukraine War is that their offshore assets will be seized if China attacks Taiwan. They would rather see Xi gone than lose their offshore assets. Bear in mind that all of Xi’s close relatives have already fled China:
The death of retired premier Li Keqiang will play a big part in legitimising Xi’s removal from power. At the expanded Politburo meeting of 14th May, former premier Wen Jiabao accused Xi Jinping of ordering the murder of Li Keqiang and suggested that Xi be investigated by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. On 26th June, General Zhang of the Central Military Commission sent an investigation team into the Ministry of Public Security.
The Minister for Public Security, Wang Xiaohong, confessed to the military team the full details of the assassination under direct orders from Xi Jinping. The wording of Xi’s order was:
There is Xi, but no Li.
Or there is Li, but no Xi.
You handle it.
An interesting detail from Wang’s career is that on 1st November, 2013, when he was running public security in Henan Province, he led a raid on the Royal No 1 Club, recognized as the premier nightclub in the Central Plains, which employed a minimum of 4,500 prostitutes at its zenith.
Wang has offered to testify publicly against Xi at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for immunity. The assassination was performed by a team from the ministry in a state guesthouse in Shanghai, by putting a heart-stopping drug in a glass of water next to the swimming pool. Li drank the water and then died in the pool.
The state propaganda organs are now building up Li’s memory, effectively beatifying him, in order to set up Xi to be taken down for ordering his murder. This will help legitimise Xi’s removal if he doesn’t go voluntarily.
Recently a Chinese official stated that China didn’t want Russia to be defeated in Ukraine because then the United States could concentrate on China in a one-front war. The corollary is that the new leadership of China will resile from attacking Taiwan and therefore the United States could readily supply Ukraine without fear of running short of weapons in the Pacific theatre.
David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare