RUTHFULLY YOURS

Rumors say mighty Xi Jinping will lose his Communist Party and Chinese state posts in the next few months. There is, however, also a large group of China watchers and academics who say that little or nothing is out of place and Xi is fine.

Whatever the truth, the U.S. and other countries need to prepare for the regime to lash out without warning. Xi may now have reason to take the world by surprise.

There are clear signs that Xi has lost control of the People’s Liberation Army, the most important faction in the Communist Party of China. A series of articles, beginning on July 9 of last year, in PLA Daily, the military’s main propaganda organ, praised “collective leadership,” a clear criticism of Xi’s one-man style of rule. At the same time, many of Xi’s loyalists were removed from their posts.

The most prominent of those removed was Xi’s No. 1 hatchet man, General He Weidong, last seen in public on March 11. Some believe the general, the No. 2 uniformed officer, was “suicided” in May in the military’s 301 Hospital in Beijing, at about the same time that another Xi supporter, General He Hongjun, was also reportedly killed.

There are also indications that Xi has lost the support of senior civilian officials. His absence from the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro in early July — the first time he had skipped this event as China’s leader — sparked talk that either he was in so much trouble that he felt he had to stay close to Beijing or that others in the leadership had prevented him from leaving the country.

Analysts who closely track the Communist Party — today’s version of the Cold War’s Kremlinologists — have noticed that state and Party media, from late April to late June, portrayed Xi in a diminished role. For instance, Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank, pointed out that Xi at a Communist Party symposium on June 13 was publicly forced to praise “collective leadership,” another sign that he had lost influence.

Nonetheless, many academics and veteran China watchers think that nothing unusual has occurred. “Much of the speculation about Xi’s political misfortunes relies on unsubstantiated rumors or glaring ignorance of context,” writes SinoInsider, a New York-based China consultancy, in a widely circulated June 25 analysis. “In some cases, a cursory look at the so-called ‘signs’ reveals them to be entirely normal occurrences. In other cases, there are simpler and more convincing explanations for developments regarded as unusual.”

At the moment, there is great disagreement among China analysts about whether the Party’s Politburo had issued rules, publicized on June 30, to restrict Xi’s powers over internal commissions and groups. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post carried a piece suggesting that Xi himself initiated the rules because he wanted to delegate power.

Strongman Xi is not known for delegating power, but in any event, there are too many out-of-the-ordinary events this year to explain away. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Burton, who served as a Canadian diplomat in Beijing, told Gatestone this month. “Xi is obviously in some sort of trouble. The smoke keeps pouring out.”

What does all this mean for the rest of the world?

If Xi is indeed weakened and has accepted his fate, the consequences for other countries are unlikely to be great. There are reports that Xi’s mother in early June hosted a lunch for Party elders, during which she negotiated her son’s safe withdrawal from the regime. If that rumor is true, a power transition in Beijing should prove to be relatively smooth.

If Xi is still in command and is as strong as ever, he would have no additional incentive to disrupt the status quo.

The world is at great risk, however, if Xi is now engaged in no-holds-barred fighting for his political life. In this case — the most probable in my view — he might feel he has every reason to stop at nothing to save himself. He could, for example, trigger a confrontation or start a war, not to rally the Chinese people — at the moment China’s people do not want war — but to prevent other senior Communist Party figures from challenging him.

Xi probably does not have the power to order the military to launch major operations, such as an invasion of the main island of Taiwan, but he can trigger a war.

For instance, he could, through his other channels, activate networks of Chinese agents in the United States, giving them the go-signal to bring down power lines, poison reservoirs, bomb shopping centers, start wildfires and kill Americans in the streets.

It is apparent that Chinese agents are now in place in America. Toward the end of the Biden administration, U.S. Border Patrol officers noticed packs of military-aged Chinese males coming from Mexico, all outfitted in identical kit. Border Patrol apparently knew that some pack members had links to the Chinese military. In addition, Border Patrol suspects that China’s military was orchestrating the infiltration.

The flood of suspicious Chinese illegal immigrants coincided with a marked increase by Chinese nationals attempting to gain entry onto American military bases. There has also been an accompanying uptick in these nationals illicitly surveilling those facilities. China is obviously studying patterns and searching for vulnerabilities. This is preparation for attack.

Why would Xi Jinping order an attack? Perhaps to show other Communist Party figures that he has the strength to take on the United States — or to create a crisis during which no one would dare to depose him.

Perhaps the Chinese regime is not tearing itself apart. In the Communist Party’s opaque political system, it is hard to know what is happening. So, given the “smoke,” as Charles Burton terms it, the U.S. needs to be prepared for China’s regime to solve its internal disputes by burning down America — and perhaps the rest of the world.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.