Downfall of Xi Jinping

Downfall of Xi Jinping

by David Archibald

2 June 2025

 

Legend has it that the first bloke to predict the fall of the Soviet Union was a French researcher who in 1973 found a rising trend in Russian infant mortality statistics. A country with healthcare going backwards is on its way out. The Soviet Union fell apart 17 years later.

China peaked about 10 years ago, by a number of measures.  When people are happy and optimistic, they tend to get married and then go on to produce children. For China in recent years, happiness peaked in 2013, one year after Xi Jinping ascended the throne. It has halved from that peak:

 

 

He then started crushing private enterprise in China, always tilting things in favor of state-owned enterprises. Xi is a Maoist and lefties always thrash the economy. Startups continuing rising for a few years, peaked in 2018, than crashed away to almost nothing:

 

 

Similarly, foreign investment pumped about US$250 billion a year into China from 2010 to 2020 but went negative in 2024:

 

 

Xi wanted to follow his thrashing of the economy with an attack on Taiwan by 2027. But this isn’t what brought him down. He overreached with the killings of his political opponents, particularly in the military. The Chinese Communist Party elders realised that unless they banded together to depose Xi, they would also be eliminated. So, they started reducing his powers. Apparently Xi attempted a military coup to regain his former position. Which was foiled. Two senior generals have been executed as a result and another 16 others have been detained.

What rankled with the elders is that Xi broke a rule, in place since Mao died, that there would not be any political killings. Mao killed off his rivals, and independent thinkers, by the thousands. He started that with the Yan’an Rectification Movement from 1942 to 1945. While the Nationalists were fighting the Japanese, Mao killed over 10,000 communists to solidify his grip on the party.

One of Xi’s political killings that disturbed a lot of Chinese was the suspected murder of retired premier Li Keqiang on 26th October, 2023. Li Keqiang, of the Communist Youth League faction, was Xi’s rival for the position of General Secretary in 2012. Even in retirement, Li’s existence as an alternative to Xi was threatening.

On 14th May there was a struggle session attended by current and former members of the Politburo Standing Committee, possibly 20 people attending in all. The bloke running the PLA now that Xi’s people have been purged is Zhang Youxia, who spoke as well as Xi and a number of others. Apparently Xi had been offered a deal under which he had until 18th July to decide how he wanted to go. He might have kept a nominal role and cited medical problems for stepping down from running the country. But his performance at the struggle session was described as shameless and likely sped up his removal.

It appears that the party elders have settled on a retired member of the Communist Youth League faction, by the name of Wang Yang, to be China’s new leader:

 

 

Mr Wang made three demands of the elders:

    1. That he would be in charge of the military.
    2. A full reset of China’s foreign policy — no more wolf warriors.
    3. An end to internal party bloodshed.

General Zhang hadn’t wanted to invade Taiwan and it looks like the invasion is now off. Another possible benefit is that the example of Xi’s fall might speed up removal of Putin in Russia.

 

See also President Xi of China to step down or be removed by July 18.

David Archibald is the author of The Anticancer Garden in Australia.