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- [00:00]
Jordan Schneider
In from Brookings Party time emergency podcast. Our poor guy, John Yoster. We thought he was the last man standing, but no, he is in fact a tiger on the road who seriously traveled upon it, undermined the cmc. Poor guy had a rough week. John, where should we start with all this?
- [00:27]
John Dotson
Well, first off, I appreciate the WWE style announcement for Zhangyuxia and his demise. So. Yeah, so I mean, I think a lot of people in the China watching community were frankly a little bit astonished that the rumors that seem to be accumulating last week were real this time around. Right. And that John Gyuxia was actually in trouble. And not just John GYU Xia. His takedown seems to have overshadowed somewhat the demise of Liu Shanli Jun Lee, the who's who was running the Joint Staff Department as well. Another CMC member leaving the cmc, the Central Military Commission, which is two members, Xi Jinping, of course. Right. And Zhangshengmin, who ironically runs the Discipline Inspection Commission still and which is kind of the chief internal investigator for all these anti corruption campaigns. Right. So. So really the whole maybe ironically might.
- [01:17]
Jordan Schneider
Not be the right word here, John.
- [01:20]
John Dotson
You know, that's a very fair point. Very fair, maybe tellingly is the right word. Right. I think it's a pretty remarkable moment in Chinese politics. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that this is kind of a Shakespearean moment for the party and for Chinese politics, just given the few facts that we do know in my mind are quite dramatic, even without the initial embroiderment of speculation and rumors that we've gone through in the last few days as well. We know their fathers had served together in China civil war. We know there had been some kind of nexus between Xi and Zhang Youxia. And that's not just historic. Xi kept Zhang around at the last party Congress, even though he was, he had exceeded the retirement age. So I think that in of itself was quite telling. Right. That there was some kind of nexus there. Right. And so to my mind, this is a qualitative leap. Xi started his term by going after his enemies. Right. In his third term, he started going after associates, like I've said before, kind of like a mafia boss, right. Seeing these guys as, as disposable. He made them, he could break them. But now in my mind, he's really going after his friends or at least people, his political allies in his innermost circle. So it's one thing to be, to be cruel to your enemies. I think it's a, it's qualitatively different to be pitiless with your friends. Right. Or with your close associates.
- [02:41]
Jordan Schneider
So let's just, let's just underline that for a second. The fact that he was kept on despite age limits. I mean this is one of the few guys who actually has battlefield experience. Right. And, and, and the signal that you send if you are willing to bend the rules for some person is that you trust them and you really believe that they are essential. And having your, you know, whichever 59 year old who's next in line would be a big mistake for the party. And she by and large has done very little of this age bending. I mean we already, we always like have these like bets before the party congresses and, and I think over the past few, it's been remarkable how few people he's kept around. So again, to go from that and then to let him stick through the purges that we emergency potted on three months ago to then over the last three months deciding no, we're not, sorry, dude, this is, you're going to get caught up in this too. It's just, is a remarkable series events setting aside all the like, you know, selling nuclear secrets to America rumors which we will get into later. But maybe. John, why don't you talk through the delta of sort of where we were from the last purge rounds to what this potentially indicates.
- [04:03]
John Dotson
Yeah, I mean, what we saw last time we spoke or when we spoke about this last time was back in the fall. And that was really in my mind punctuating a lot of what had already gotten underway. Right. Because you need a party plenum to formally purge a lot of these people from the Central Committee. Right. So I think the most conspicuous one was Hou Weidong. Right. The other CMC Vice Chairman. Right. And you also had several other figures go down. You also had a number of Central Committee members, some of whom who had been missing, purportedly, some of whom who hadn't been, who are then absent from that plenum as well. And then you had a number of other officers from the PLA who were alternates who could have potentially been next in the queue for elevation to the Central Committee, who are also passed over too. Right. So it was already pretty breathtaking as of last summer. And that was the piece that John Culver and I wrote about. Right. This was already on par with what you would have seen in the Mao era or in the post Kianna man era. And now this just takes us one step further. And I think that's, that's important too because I think people are the John case, I think, in and of itself is quite significant, but I think a lot of people are getting hung up just on that one particular case. And I think we have to keep in mind this is. This is part of a longer storyline. Right. But also a broader phenomenon. Right. So there's a lot of theories and speculation floating around about, well, why did he go after Zhang in this moment. But I think. I think the main takeaway is, number one, we don't. We don't actually know. And I think we can talk through some. Some of the theories that are floating around out there, but I think it loses sight of the fact that this is a generational turnover. Right. This is a whole generational cohort that has been virtually decapitated at this point. And I think what it suggests to me is that she was kind of fed up with the whole. With the whole crop of leaders for whatever reason. Right. And it could have been variegated. Right. There could have been different reasons for taking down different people, but he clearly determined at some point, you know what I don't like? I don't like this crop, and I've just got to get rid of them wholesale, you know. And I know when we look at the People Play Daily's official. The editorial about this, you know, I think it's important to take that with a grain of salt. But I'm increasingly wondering, you know, should we. Should we be reading it both literally and seriously? Right. Because they talk about corruption. They talk about these guys trampling upon the Chairman Responsibility Commission, which is the chairman responsibility system, which is how she, of course, controls the pla. So it's clear there was some kind of corruption issue. As we all know, that's usually the pretext. Right? There's all these guys have their hand in the till at some point, just given the way the PLA has functioned over the last 30 years or so. So there's kind of a pretext always sitting there conveniently to take down anyone. And then there's this political issue, but we really just don't know what was that political problem. And the wording that they used in that document was quite stark, right. Where they said it challenged the foundation of the party's control of the military. Yeah.
- [07:08]
Jordan Schneider
So let's, let's, let's do a little spin doctor ing for a bit. I mean, like getting the Wall Street Journal to write an article saying that this guy sold nuclear secrets to America. I mean, that was a choice. Like some, like, I'm not saying Ling Ling made it up, but Someone had to tell her. And you don't tell that, you don't tell that to Lingling. And, and keep your head unless you are being told that it is okay to tell that to Lingling. Presumably.
- [07:43]
John Dotson
Presumably. Or it's clear that this guy has already gone down. And I think the dearth of information, it just feeds these kind of rumors. Right. And I think that's important to remember. It's not just that people in Washington or New York are trying to grapple with what happened and don't have a clear insight into what actually happened. This is a very opaque system. It's heavily stovepiped. I think it's entirely plausible and probably likely that a lot of people inside the system don't really know what, what actually happened, quote, unquote. Right. And I think that's important to remember. I mean one has to think too that an investigation like this of the ranking Vice Vice chairman of the Central Military Commission must have been conducted in great, great secrecy. Right. And that the circle would have been quite small. So you know, I think a lot of, a lot of us on this side of the Pacific were, were surprised, but I think it's, we all want to approach this with a great degree of humility, but in fairness, Duncan himself might have been surprised.
- [08:44]
PLA Daily/Official Statement Reader
Yeah.
- [08:45]
Jordan Schneider
Well, let's just play a little bit of media criticism for a second because I've gotten like many a text on this from, from Lingling's article. China's senior most general is accused of leaking information about the country's nuclear weapons program. US and accepting bribes for official acts including the promotion of an officer to defense minister. Said people familiar with a high level briefing on the allegations. And then later we have the most shocking allegation disclosed during the closed door briefing the people said was that Zhang leaked core technical data on China's nuclear weapons to the US So in the past we've had this game played in reverse where you have the US intelligence community trying to like rattle China. And John, you don't have to talk about this like saying, oh yeah, we knew that there was water in your missiles or whatever sort of as a shot across the bow in one direction. And now when you have the sourcing that Ling Ling has and the sort of, and those two lines of like this is this, I think it's pretty clear is not something that she's getting from the US intelligence community, it's something that she's getting from, from contacts in China who she has every right to believe, like have enough information to tell her something like that. So, you know, when people tell things to Ling Ling, it's both to communicate to the world, but also to communicate to the rest of the Chinese system. So, John, let's play, let's game it out here. Like, why would you know who gains and like, what, what is the messaging upside from talking about Jan Yosha as someone who committed like high treason? Not just, not just corruption, but high treason.
- [10:30]
John Dotson
Yeah, I mean, I think the gain is you're kind of really putting, putting a nail in his political coffin. Right? And like you said, maybe people weren't officially sanctioned to tell Ling Ling this, but the fact that this is what is floating around means, means that it's safe to talk, talk about him in these terms. Right. And that it's, you know, it's traitorous in effect. Right? So that, that's really what it suggests to me more, more than anything else about, you know, it's safe to, it's safe to smear the guy who just days ago was the most powerful military officer in his generation, right? And now he's, he's really, you know, it's not just. I think this gets lost sometimes too. It's not just the formality of being purged, but before the purge comes, you're disgraced, right. For your disloyalty to the party and in this instance to the country as well. So it's really full bore. And I think what's really striking about it to Jordan is the timing, right? We are just about 20 months away from a party congress. She could have just, just as easily have let John Gosia retired even if there were a real issue there, right?
- [11:35]
Jordan Schneider
Heart attack. I mean, whatever. Like.
- [11:37]
John Dotson
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, give him, give him, give him worse housing and Jongnan High DACA's, DACA's pension fund, you know, whatever, but just kind of, you know, quietly neutralize.
- [11:49]
Jordan Schneider
Tell him to go to defense, take a hike and go to defense. Tag, you know.
- [11:53]
John Dotson
Yeah, exactly.
- [11:55]
Jordan Schneider
Ways to play this game which are not quite as dramatic and. No, it's, it's a really good point and I think comes back to your kind of generational cutoff thing where she's just done and he wants to be rid of all these people. But here's the problem, John. If this is your boy, right, this is the, this is the guy you wanted to ride off to into, you know, your late 70s, right? Are you going to, are you going to all of a sudden take to some, some hotshot 58 year old, I mean, like, like who wants this job?
- [12:29]
John Dotson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. One has to think it's not really good for morale on their side. Right. And it's, I think it's a great question, right, Because I think this is something that, that I've been looking more closely at is who comes up behind this cohort. Right. Because if you look one level down from the Central Military Commission, a lot of people at the theater command grade have themselves been ousted during these rounds of purges. So there are still some people floating around. And it bears further, further analysis about who might even still be in the running, who's young enough and who's got the right credentials and the right grade to be flighted up to the Central Military Commission. Because you're going to have to have some people up there theoretically, now that, you know, now that it's a, you know, it's basically a tandem bike up there now.
- [13:18]
Jordan Schneider
Or will you, I mean, is this just an institution that might go by the wayside? What does that path look like? And why don't you explain to everyone what it does now? What's the function of this?
- [13:26]
John Dotson
Yeah, so the, the Central Military Commission is, is the party supreme military body, right. Because for, for the uninitiated, but I think many of your, your listeners don't fall into the category. The PLA is actually the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party. It's not a national military and of a wonky, esoteric distinction. But I think one way to think about it, it would be like if when the Democratic or Republican Party came to power, they had their own, they had their own military wing that was loyal to them and not to the government. Right. That's that, that's been in effect the case since, since it was founded in 1927, but since the, the Communist took control of the country in 1949. Right. And you can see it both in the PLA editorial, but also on a regular basis, there's a constant cadence in the official military press about job number one is loyalty to the party.
- [14:13]
Jordan Schneider
Right.
- [14:14]
John Dotson
That is really the top priority. And I think especially for somebody like Xi Jinping, that is very much foremost in his mind. So the Central Military Commission is how the party exercises its control. And I think the thing, the point to really foot stomp here too is that it's the only locus of civilian control over the military. Right. She is the only person that bridges those two parts of the system. There are no other civilians on it. And the only time you get a civilian on the Central Military Commission is when there's some kind of heir apparent. Right. And they started doing this in the 1980s under Deng Xiaoping. So to build up Deng's prospective successors by creating this vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, which has not, has not been filled since she took the top dub in, in 2012. Right. And everybody else is uniformed. And so there's no, there's, you know, when you're talking about civil military relations are more appropriately, in this instance, party army relations. There's no, you know, Senate Armed Services Committee staffers who have deep knowledge of the military floating around. Right. There's no, you know, Tweety think tankers who are, who are military experts to really scrutinize what the military is up to. And even within it, there's nothing like the office of the Secretary of Defense that we have. Right. Which is populated largely by civilians to oversee what's going on in the rest of the Pentagon bureaucracy. So it is, it is a high tech, you know, culturally opaque organization. It's really an empire unto itself within the Chinese Communist Party, which is why I think they've been such. Xi has been so relentless in his focus on puncturing that bureaucratic insularity of the pla. Right. And it's constantly, you know, for, for lack of a better term, mowing the grass on that side and removing people to ensure that he gets his, his arms around it. Because it is, it is indeed quite challenging, especially since they're so heavily resour.
- [16:11]
Jordan Schneider
Can you imagine being. Well, if you're that, who, who's the inspector guy who's, who's still around?
- [16:17]
John Dotson
John Sheng Ming. Yeah.
- [16:19]
Jordan Schneider
Okay, Just imagine being Johnson. Mean, I mean, does it, how does it come. Does she say this guy's gotta go or does he like, you know, prevent present the docket being like, it's either me or him. You better trust me. I found you some. I found you some rotten fish in the past. I mean, do you have any historical insight into, into these sorts of investigations?
- [16:45]
John Dotson
The truth is it probably depends. I mean, I think she, My guess would be she probably has some kind of dossier on all these guys.
- [16:54]
Jordan Schneider
Right.
- [16:55]
John Dotson
And that's why the discipline inspection commissions are so important. That's, that's John Shab in particular. Right. Because it's, it's like you have to like have, have.
- [17:05]
Jordan Schneider
Have the menus prepared for, yeah. Anyone and everyone. And then he slips over the card when he feels like that. That makes more sense.
- [17:12]
John Dotson
I mean, my understanding is that it is a feature, not a bug of the, of the communist system. Right. This is how you maintain control over a party that has a bigger population than Germany, right. Is that, you know, over 90 million people, right? You constantly have leverage. You constantly have something hanging over everyone's head. And so everybody's vulnerable, right? And, and the Discipline Inspection Commission, they, they, they in effect have everybody's permanent record. Right, for, for the entirety of their careers. Every error, every demerit. Right. Every stupid thing you've done is you've watched. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, it's, it's unclear. You know, I mean, I could see it taking over, you know, just, just using a little bit of my imagination. I mean, you could say this taking a variety of forms where it's either kind of a targeted hit or it's, you know, it's the famous line from Beckett, will nobody rid me of this meddlesome priest? Right. And there's kind of a very unsubtle hint about, about who needs to go down. But it's hard. You know, it's possible that it's bottom up, but this would have been so delicate and so sensitive. Right. Because Zhang is then, you know, assuming he was involved in this investigation, he's in effect, you know, he would have been investigating his boss. Right. Even after getting bumped up to the. To. To be CMC Vice Chairman.
- [18:34]
Jordan Schneider
So Jamestown put out an article which kind of did like a deep linguistic dive into some past Pla. Purge memorabilia and the articles that came out for Jang Yosai and basically was trying to make the point that this was an expression of Xi's frustration with 2027 Taiwan readiness. What's your take on that thesis, John?
- [19:00]
John Dotson
Well, two thoughts. Number one, it's plausible, right? We just don't know at this point. It's possible that there was some kind of substantive or policy disagreement. And, you know, I give. I give our colleagues at Jamestown a lot of credit for, for giving these, these official announcements, kind of a. A Talmudic reading. Right. Very close. Right. Very precise. But I don't know. I. I'm not, I'm personally not persuaded that there's enough there just in, in the text and in some of the nuances that they honor to make the case that there was some kind, truly some kind of substantive difference. Right. I feel like from my perspective, I would need more evidence to be persuaded that that was what was going on here. I also think too, just in terms of how the party operates and how politics inside that system work, yes, there are policy disagreements, but those are seldom the drivers of something like this. Policy differences is how our system is designed to function. You pick your party or your allegiances based on your policy preferences. I think in the Chinese system, a lot of time it runs the other way. You pick your policy preferences based on who you're affiliated with and who you're close to. And if Zhang is somebody who's close to Xi Jinping, then you were closely in tandem. Now we just don't know how the dynamic played out behind closed doors, but I don't think we have enough there to say this is, this is clearly what was going on between the two of them.
- [20:25]
Jordan Schneider
Yeah. And I think this is, you know, a Joseph Turigian point is that oftentimes the people who get purged, like, had no intention to, and there was no kind of like ill will or scheming. They just sort of like read the raw, read the Tea leaf the wrong way unintentionally. And they, you know, they thought what she wanted was A, but what he actually wanted was B. And honestly, I put that as a much higher probability thing than like, this guy was like the highest ranking American agent that like, you know, this country's ever pulled off or something.
- [21:04]
John Dotson
100%. And I think, I think Joseph's thinking on this is, is quite right. And the irony is for Xi Jinping is that's exactly what happened to his father, right. When he was toppled in 1962, he was trying to be a loyal soldier. He was working for Zhou Enlai. He was trying to, you know, quote unquote, do the right thing and be. And be, be a loyal staffer. And he just got sideways of the boss. Right. And so that to me seems, seems more likely in this scenario. And that, that's just not, not just a feature of the Mao era. It's not idiosyncratic to Mao. I think that's, I think that that's what happened to Hu Yaobang under Deng Xiaoping. Right. Huyabang thought he was good. He thought he was in a safe position with Deng, but he had done things that had alienated him. Right. And he desperately tried to repair the relationship, in my understanding. So this is kind of how the system works. So it seems more likely that she thought there was some kind of issue with John than Zhang Youxia intentionally went out to try to flout his chief patron and boss, who's a strong man. I mean, even saying it out loud, see, it makes it sound increasingly impossible for that kind of system.
- [22:10]
Jordan Schneider
You can't have lasted that long and be this dumb. I think is kind of where I, where I land here.
- [22:17]
John Dotson
I mean, you could always be surprised on that front, but it's. Yes, it seems. It seems less likely if you. If you had to. If you had to, had to grade it on a curve. But I think that, that, that torgium point, then this is something I've been grappling with over the last few days, and I'm not sold on it.
- [22:32]
PLA Daily/Official Statement Reader
But.
- [22:32]
John Dotson
But I think if that is the case, that this is more about Xi's suspicions than any one particular thing that Zhang did or there wasn't any deliberate intent from Zhang Youxia. Does that mean then we're moving. Xi is moving into kind of a. More of a space where he's a paranoid dictator, Right? He really doesn't. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's not really my mental model of Xi Jinping. I think he is extremely ruthless. And I'm more inclined to the hypothesis that this is kind of the ultimate illustration of Shi Sangfwa. Right. That he's just willing to go after even his close associates if. If he's done with them. Right. I think that. I think that gets to another possibility here. Right. That maybe. Maybe she was just done with Zhang Kyousia. Right. Maybe he had used Zhang to. To prop up his power inside the military, clean house, get rid of a bunch of other people, and then when he was done doing that, then he could set his eyes on Zhang Youxia and figured, you know, I don't need to have this aging, corrupt guy sitting here at the top of the system. Right. I'm just speculating, but that's. I think that's also possible.
- [23:39]
Jordan Schneider
And that's kind of. That gives you another, like, reason to. To play the he's a trade, he's a corrupt traitor card publicly. Right?
- [23:48]
John Dotson
Yeah.
- [23:48]
Jordan Schneider
Is. Is if what you're really trying to do is just like, make clear to the next generation we're really fucking serious about this.
- [23:55]
John Dotson
Yeah.
- [23:55]
Jordan Schneider
And it's like, by the way, if you haven't gotten the memo yet, having all of your bosses thrown in jail, just. Just you wait. Even the top guy we're gonna get to.
- [24:05]
John Dotson
Yeah.
- [24:06]
Jordan Schneider
And. And that as like a narrative shaping thing. Like, why pass. You know, it's like a. It's like the vert. It's like, you know, we don't really have show trials in China, but this is kind of the closest thing we get are these, you know, are these. Are these. Are these people's daily and pla. Daily op. Eds saying, like, this guy's a crook and a terrible person and betrayed the party. And to do that in the most dramatic fashion just. Is like Another exclamation point.
- [24:32]
John Dotson
I. Yeah, I think that's entirely possible. And it reminds me of this. This quote from Ben Franklin that I've always liked where he says, it's such a wonderful thing to be a reasonable creature because then you can find a reason for whatever it is you want to do. Right. And I think that's very much how the party rolls in these kind of instances.
- [24:49]
Jordan Schneider
You know, it's interesting that they didn't say, like, sell to the Japanese. Right. Have we gotten any of those?
- [24:58]
John Dotson
You know, I feel like we haven't seen that spirit here since 1949, I want to say. But it's like.
- [25:04]
Jordan Schneider
But, like, it'd be. It'd be good if we're. If we're just trying to push a narrative. Right? Yeah. Like, and we want to. We want to reinforce that whole thing or to. Or the Taiwanese. I mean, it's almost like. It's kind of like the. It's kind of like the Putin thing where it's like, it's like, if you're going to. If you're going to lose the war in Ukraine, you can't lose it to the Ukrainians. You got to lose it to the Americans. Right. But, like, getting, Getting. Getting like cor. By the Taiwanese or Japanese is just, like, too embarrassing. We would never want to tell anyone.
- [25:31]
John Dotson
Well, and the Chinese on the, on the CCP side, they would say, you can't be corrupted by the Taiwanese because they're part of China. Right. But I think you're right. I think that. I think that element of contempt, and I think, you know, the fact of that rumor, again, it's just a small encapsulation of the fact that we loom large. We. The United States as a boogeyman. Right. And a. And more of a pr. Like, I think they have too much contempt for, you know, the Taiwanese or even the Japanese to say, oh, we got. We got played and outmaneuver by them, especially on something so sensitive. Right.
- [26:02]
Jordan Schneider
Yeah. And I think it's been the same whenever they've announced, like, hacks, like electronic hacks they've caught. It's always been Americans. They've never said it's a different country. All right, should we talk Taiwan a little bit then, John? I mean, sure, I feel, like, dumb asking you this question, but I guess it is. It's an important one to ask, sort of, what does this mean for Taiwan contingencies?
- [26:27]
John Dotson
So I've. I've actually been turning this question on its head a little bit, Jordan. And I think what this means, and I don't think this is the core driver of what's going on here, but I think the Xi's willingness to just totally clean house, renovate the military, strip, strip the high command down to its studs, shows that he feels pretty comfortable about the external environment and about the cross strait environment in particular.
- [26:50]
Jordan Schneider
Right.
- [26:50]
John Dotson
And there are kind of three big reasons for that. Number one, you know, President Trump doesn't seem personally invested in the Taiwan issue. Right. And you even see that in the national defense strategy that doesn't even mention Taiwan. Right. So I think they're, they're reading that signal pretty clearly. Number two, President Lai Jingta, who, whom they loathe, is in political trouble at home ever since the failed recalled campaign this summer. And there's going to be an election in 2028, and the opposition KMT party, its new leadership, is saying very favorable things about Beijing. Right. So I think from their perspective, they've got a little bit of breathing room, And I think 2028 is probably the next big pivot point in their mind. Right. And I think they probably sense they have a real opportunity there to start to shape and shift the dynamic. Right. So again, I don't think that's a driver, but I think when she is, you know, thinking about all this, he probably feels pretty comfortable bell about the situation. The other thing I would point out too is that, you know, this is always the challenge with assessing the PLA is, number one, yes, there's deeply rooted corruption, but the modernization effort remains really impressive. I mean, this is kind of true of China and its economy and its development writ large. There's real rot, there's real dysfunction, there's real corruption, but there's also real dynamism and they're doing real things. And there's an actual impressive quality to it. Both coexist at the same time. And I think that's true just in the last few months. So even as we had the exclamation mark put on the last round of purges at this fall's plenum just a few weeks after that, the PLA conducted a pretty significant military exercise around Taiwan in the closing days of 2025. Right. And there was this theory floating around while there were a bunch of people from the 31st Group army, and now they're not going to know how to do these things. It's pretty clear they still know how to do these things. Right. Just based on the operation that they were able to pull together and conduct at the end of last year. So again, it's one of these things you have to think this has got to be terrible for morale. Right? And it's not how you, how you would run kind of a high morale, high tempo organization in the West. But you know, it's their system and this is, this is, this is how they operate.
- [28:56]
Jordan Schneider
You know, these generals are a dime a dozen, John. You just got to, you just got to shape there. As long as they get the ideology right, everything else will fall into place. Let's talk about 2028 then. So the election is going to be in January, which leaves you a lot of time with a KMT leader of Taiwan, a potential KMT leader of Taiwan, a Trump who wants to, you know, create peace, deal things. Maybe, I don't know, we'll see where he, where he is on war then. But I mean, that's like a, that's a big chunky window for some new deals to me, babe. But I guess the question is like, yeah, what, I don't know, where would we start on that? Like, what's the form in which some sort of reconciliation could, could potentially take.
- [29:43]
John Dotson
Yeah, I mean, the other, the other factor I would put in there too is that Xi in all likelihood will be, will have started his fourth term just a couple months earlier. Right. We'll have a party congress in, you know, probably October, November, kind of time frame in 2027, and then you'll have the elections in, in Taiwan. So I think for Xi, this is, this is, this is part of his mindset going, going into that, into that moment. So yeah, there's time. I think a lot of it will be more about the cross straight dynamic primarily than necessarily the bilateral dynamic. And we saw go around, and I think this is kind of more of a theological question in Washington than an empirical one about what does she want on the Taiwan issue. But my theory about this for a while has been that almost a little more than a decade ago, Xi Jinping, of course, met with Ma Ying Jo in Singapore and shook hands. Right. And that was the first time you had a meeting of that sort between the two sides since the Marshall mission in 1946 when Mao met Chiang Kai Shek. And she obviously loves that kind of historical resonance. Right. Anything that ends with the first since Mao. Right, right. That, that, that, that's a preferred sentence construction, I'm sure for him. Right. And so I think, yeah, if you're.
- [30:57]
Jordan Schneider
Gonna purge, you better do it this, you better do it the same way too.
- [31:00]
John Dotson
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [31:01]
Jordan Schneider
We're not gonna go, you know, we're not gonna pussyfoot around with this sort of thing. We're gonna, we're gonna surpass. We're gonna gon Chow Mao in his, in his purging ability.
- [31:11]
John Dotson
Exactly. Bigger, badder, meaner. I think that's right. But I think what's important about that moment is that I think pretty early in Xi's tenure that established the minimum threshold that he needed to clear. Right. As he starts to think about his legacy and starts to think about his exit from the scene, either for political reasons if he retires, or if he just is thinking about his legacy and his mortality in his fourth turn. So when he says I can't pass, we can't pass this issue on from generation to generation, I don't think that means necessarily that he's got to have solve the whole, solve, quote unquote, the whole thing and have it all wrapped up by the time he exits the scene. I think if he's able to have at least a fake leaf and say this is on the right trajectory, right. I didn't inherit it that way, but things are moving in the right direction and we're having some kind of ongoing political conversation with Taiwan about the status and about the nature of the status. I think for Xi, that that would be, that would be a win, right? And it might be enough to satisfy him. I mean, I'm sure he would want more. But I think it's worth remembering that some kind of Taiwan contingency, some kind of military contingency would be really costly, right? Like the German Marshall Fund body, Glazer Co. And Zach Cooper and a few others just did a big report on this and it shows it would be really costly. I mean, this is really, if you're at the casino table, this is putting all the shits on the table. And so I think it just underscores that for Xi, this is a crisis to avoid rather than an opportunity to be sought.
- [32:38]
Jordan Schneider
And just to imagine that over the course of the next three years, this new cohort of generals who he doesn't know at all and has like, presumably has presumably zero interaction with, zero trust with, by the way, like hates all of their former bosses guts and has thrown all of them in jail, like to get into a headspace where you trust those guys enough to like make the biggest call that China has made since like splitting with the Soviet Union is. It just seems really far fetched. So I'm with you, John, on this.
- [33:20]
John Dotson
And especially because I think one of Xi's, you know, one of my theories about Xi is that I think especially as a princeling, he knows he's going to get. Yes. Manned. Right. And I think he's very keenly attuned to that. And I, you know, my suspicion about how he operates is probably that he's constantly triangulating information. Right. I think as we talked about a little bit before, and I think you're right about this political dynamic too, with the generational turnover and it's not just on the military side, it's also on the party side too. I had written a piece in September of last year for China Leadership Monitor talking about what Xi's four term looked like. And it's kind of an extrapolation of what we're already seeing in Xi's third term, which is that there's a lot of policy continuity at the same time that you have this operatic drama on the personnel side. Right. And I think that's likely to continue. Yeah, yeah.
- [34:08]
Jordan Schneider
So we had this discussion back and back a few weeks ago of what could make this go to shit. The US China relationship. I do not think, like domestic personnel changes are what's going to drive that by any means. But look, I mean, well, well, here's the crazy thing, okay? Say he has a heart attack tomorrow, like, and there's just like no one running the pla. I mean, that's just a wild kind of moment to be in.
- [34:39]
John Dotson
Yeah. Yes, indeed. And I think people underappreciate this sometimes or don't fully realize it, that on the, on the party side in particular, there is no formal line of succession. Right. There's nothing like what we have in the Constitution. There's nothing written down that says, well, if the General Secretary dies, then it goes to the Premier or it goes to, you know, the President, if that happens to be a separate position or, you know, there's nothing like that for, for, for those most important jobs at the top. It's all, all those decisions are made through informal politicking. So, yeah, our boy John man, Chief.
- [35:12]
Jordan Schneider
Inquisitor riding, rising to the highest sea of power.
- [35:15]
John Dotson
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Tomatoes.
- [35:17]
Jordan Schneider
Who's rooting for him?
- [35:19]
John Dotson
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm sure he has many fans and admirers throughout the pla, Right? So, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a great point. So I think you're right. And so I think what will probably happen. And again, this is my guess, the only. I don't think he'll get rid of the Central Military Commission altogether as an institution. Right. Even, I think even during the Cultural Revolution, it continued to exist in name. Even if it was hollowed out. Right. And I think he needs to repopulate it now. He has a totally free hand to do it. And it's not just about who's going to fill which position. Right. The individual personalities, but it's also about what institutions could be represented at the top. Right. He kicked off the Minister of National Defense and he's kind of restructured it. And I think we talked about this back in the fall. I mean, it went from being a normal kind of pyramidic bureaucratic structure to being this bizarre diamond shape. Right. With a couple of conspicuous vacancies. But in order to do that, the only body in China that can appoint new members to the Central Military Commission is a plenum of the Central Committee. Right. And so that's something that I'm on the lookout for is do we start hearing rumblings about that happening? And I'm very mindful that she, in effect, skipped a plenum in this political cycle. So he's got kind of one one of my colleagues calls a pocket plenum. Right. He's got one that he can play around with and that he could throw on the calendar. And I mean, they could do that anyway.
- [36:45]
Jordan Schneider
Right.
- [36:47]
John Dotson
But he did do this in his second term after he. He blew up the. The retirement requirement for the presidency. Right. You had two plenums in pretty quick succession. But he'll need something like that because it's not clear to me even. Even as an observer, like, how is the chain of command supposed to function now? Right, yeah, because you had the two vice chairmen, and it looked like one was operational Zhang Yoshi and one was political zhangshengmin. And now you have. The chief of the Joint Staff department is also gone. So how is this, you know, how is just the. The normal kind of paperwork to. Supposed to flow at the top? So I think that they'll probably need to do that at some point. And she has broken a lot of norms in Chinese politics, but some of the stuff that is in fact written down, he still abided by that, right?
- [37:33]
Jordan Schneider
Well, I mean, it's interesting. So, like today, right? I mean, it's not literally she. Does he have some, like, Michu who's 42, who he trusts with this sort of thing, who, like, I don't know, his dad was in the PLA or something or like, grew up on a military base? I mean, like, is there. Is there anyone on his team who, like, is there like a. Is there like a military attache or something that, like, runs around with Xi that he would, like I mean, what I don't.
- [38:01]
John Dotson
There's been some reporting about this and some rumors, but it's not, it's not totally clear to me, right. Like who, who he's going to trust and who he's going to trust to, you know, not just to repopulate, but to figure out who's actually going to be reliable. Right. And so this is one of the things that, that again, this is that I start to worry about as we, we enter this next phase and sees leadership is, you know, who is he relying on for advice? Who's got his ear, especially if this is such a clear signal to people in his close circle that really nobody is safe.
- [38:32]
Jordan Schneider
Right.
- [38:32]
John Dotson
And I think to my mind, that is a big part of the significance. And I want to give a shout out to one of your followers on Substack who called me out for this because I had this theory before that there were kind of two tiers in xi's political universe, right. If she was the center of the solar system, you had people inside the asteroid belt, and I included John Gose on that, who were kind of untouchable, and then people on the outside. So in fairness, you know, I think it's a totally fair point. You know, I got, I got a text message from a friend of mine the, the morning after this was announced. Overnight. Well, she seemed to have Newt, his own moon here. Right. And so it's, it's a, it's a fair point. I mean, look, I think this, this just shows, you know, we're all kind of trying to, to devise mental models and theories about how this is operating and how you can parse these things and explain why some people go down and other others don't. So I think, you know, I had teed that up in the past as, as a big signpost that something had shifted in Chinese politics. And now that we've crossed that threshold, I think it's pretty clear something has shifted. Right? This, this, this is, this is a big deal.
- [39:36]
Jordan Schneider
So Terry Pugula, owner of the buffalo bills, is 74. Xi Jinping, ruler of China, is 72. Terry Pula just made what the entire Buffalo Bills fandom sees as a absolutely, like, dumb fuck decision. Firing the most, winning, the winningest coach of the past decade in the NFL, apparently, because he just like, walked into the locker room and thought the vibes were off after they lost to the Broncos, and then, you know, five days later has decided to hire the, the offensive coordinator, Joe Brady, who's 37 and is. No, is in no way Shape or form going to do a better job than his former boss. Now, you know, we are trying to like, it was very funny seeing all the Buffalo Bills insider coverage, trying to like come up with some 4D chess about like what this guy was thinking. And then three days later he does a press conference and it's clear this is just a very old man who is, is not really thinking all that straight and is just like throwing darts at the wall. And because he's the owner of the team, he can do whatever the fuck he wants. And you know, as we're trying to sort of think about this, it's like, yeah, she's gonna have to hire, you know, some new offensive coordinators for the, you know, a Taiwan invasion contingency or whatever. And the fact that like, yeah, he's, he's, he's from like, we now have like a two generation gap between him and the people he's hiring. He has no kind of interaction with them, no common ground with them. He probably thinks they all don't love the party and have never suffered and like looks down on these people born who didn't kind of grow up with that whole cultural revolution, like struggle in them. It's just, it's just a really tricky place to be having no one you can trust besides like Wang Huning.
- [41:37]
John Dotson
Yeah.
- [41:37]
Jordan Schneider
Dark place.
- [41:39]
John Dotson
Yes, yes. And, and this is kind of what I was getting at earlier too, right? About, about is this kind of the, the ultimate illustration of Xi's cold blooded rationality and his, his unforgiving governance of the PLA in particular, or are we seeing a shift in his leadership style and how he approaches this, his things where he's either more paranoid or just showing signs of aging. And again, I'm inclined more to see this just given the broader context of what's been going on about this being a deliberate choice, even if it's not, you know, an optimal one, as some, somebody, some other commentator put it. And that was just the, the decision you make after a lot of thought and, and deliberation or you know, I think if he's doing this, making moves like this on a whim, we are in any, you know, we're already in a pretty dark place in terms of Chinese politics, but I think we're even in a darker place if that is, if that is what's going on. I expected more of this, honestly, in his fortune and this dynamic we talked about with the generational turnover, I think that's going to actually intensify the process. Right. Because I think what I Think what will happen now that you, now that you have had a lot of people wiped out in the PLA from, from Zhang's generation and a little bit younger is that everybody's going to be trying to ingratiate themselves with the boss, right? And trying to push aside their rivals, right? So it's going to feed that, that competitive, ugly, competitive dynamic inside the system. And then on the civilian side, I think you'll have that, especially in his fourth term. As you know, his buddies on the Politburo Standing Committee start to retire because a lot of them are going to have to step down if she sticks to those informal age rules in 2027. So, you know, when she looks into that meeting now, the Popular Standing Committee, now it's all guys he's known for decades, it's all his buddies, right? And you know, in a couple years, they're all going to look like a bunch of, bunch of whippersnappers to him, right?
- [43:31]
Jordan Schneider
Yeah.
- [43:31]
John Dotson
So what I really wonder about and what I, what I, what I wondered out loud about in that China Leadership Monitor piece that I mentioned is, you know, so far the politics and the policy making seem to have operated on parallel tracks, right? Where there is this policy continuity, you saw it in the fifth plenum, you'll see it in the next five year plan, and then on the other side, all this drama on the personnel side. So the question in my mind, just given the nature of Chinese politics, is at what point does the politicking start to infect the policy making? Because so far, again, seems to have been sanitized, the policy making seems to have been sanitized and safe from it, as far as we can observe from the outside. But I think that is one of the open questions that I have and that I'm on the lookout for.
- [44:17]
Jordan Schneider
Anything else you want to close on, John?
- [44:19]
John Dotson
I get all my sports news from ChinaTalk. Jordan.
- [44:23]
Jordan Schneider
Maybe I'll do this, but we had a bit of travel journalism that we ran on Chinatalk a few weeks ago and this guy who was traveling in Shanxi Province told this story of his friend who was a low level government employee of a medium sized provincial city. That night we were supposed to be having a chill dinner, but he had to explore, excuse himself to work, talking nonstop on the phone. What was he doing? He was making the rounds, calling dozens of employees within his department to transmit the news orally. The memo had come down from above and people needed to be notified immediately. Why all this secrecy and commotion? His partner told me that this happened semi regularly. The hushed one on one memo dissemination quote. Another time this kind of thing happened in recent memory was a few months ago when a three year old boy went missing in our city. We had to let everyone know that it was forbidden to report on this issue, no matter what new information you may come across. And you know, if that's your life as a low level provincial employee in Shanxi province, like, and that is the kind of stress that you're living under is like randomly having to make four hours of phone calls from 11:00pm to 3:00 clock in the morning. Can you imagine what it means to have a combatant command or what it means to be on the cmc? Like what your day to day headspace in is just, I don't know, it's, it's, it's the stuff of horror movies. It's like really terrifying.
- [45:51]
John Dotson
Yeah. And I think about this with the people who are at the top of the system too. It's not, you know, especially having left government pretty recently. It's not like what you have in Washington where people will go, go, go at the NSC or State Department as political appointees and then tag out or you know, get voted out of office and then go through a think tank and have the time to reflect and think about what they, they did in the past and what they might want to do in the future. These guys are just going full steam ahead, grinding it out constantly. Right. And you got to think about like I think about like a guy like Wangi, right, the current foreign minister who's you know, also in his 70s now and you know, his, you know, the, the last guy who was foreign minister was also purged and ousted, right. And not to be heard from again. And that's just the system that you're operating under now. I have my own theory that Wangi probably a better that process but, but again, I mean to be operating in that system where it's not just about the stress but also the stakes. And you know, I put this in my piece right after the plenum last year when there were all these purges announced, like. Yeah, I think you're right to, to try to imagine how this looks like from a party cadres perspective. You know, the slog to the top is very challenging. It's a ton of hard, hard work. It's a ton of growing an ulcer and managing these, these really vicious political dynamics and then you get to the top of the system and you can just be thrown over that metaphorical cliff on a whim. Right.
- [47:16]
Jordan Schneider
I mean it is, it is. Alex Honnold climbing a 40 year tall.
- [47:23]
John Dotson
I love that. Right.
- [47:24]
Jordan Schneider
Where at any minute you could, you know. Well like I mean maybe there are parts of it that are fun. I think Alec Honnold likes climbing. There's probably a part of this where these people do like doing politics and.
- [47:35]
John Dotson
Military shit or whatever. Right.
- [47:36]
Jordan Schneider
But like, but like yeah, when John, when you're on the NSC you are not worried that Jake Sullivan is going to throw you in jail for the rest of your life. Right? This is, it's a different thing. And this sort of. Yeah, like the level of stress and what that must do to sort of your decision making and how you relate to your colleagues and like just how you operate in the world.
- [48:02]
PLA Daily/Official Statement Reader
Like.
- [48:02]
Jordan Schneider
Yeah, aside from frying your brain it's just you have this extra layer of like playing politics with your life in every interaction you have which is just a very heavy thing.
- [48:14]
John Dotson
Yeah, I think that, I think that is, I think that is 100% spot on. Like these are, these are big jobs anyway to begin with and if you layer over that constant, that constant fretting and I think you know, to circle back to where we started the conversation. That's why it's such a big deal in my mind to get rid of somebody like Zhang Yoshi assuming that what we know about their relationship is true and there was some level of trust and confidence. Because you're not just going to trust anybody like that in that system. Right? You're going to, it's going to take decades because you never know if the guy that you're chatting with over a couple of beers is going to sell you out to the discipline inspection commission or tuck it away to use as leverage against you at some point down the road. Right. That's, that is, I think that is the paradox of the system. It's a low trust system. So trust is in many ways even more important in that system than it is in ours. Right. Where we are kind of a high trust society and polity, the big scale.
- [49:04]
Jordan Schneider
It's not a no new friend system, it's a no friends period system. And like do you think they talk to these people, talk to their wives or like tell them anything or confide in them at all. I mean maybe, but it's not like they see them all that much to begin with.
- [49:20]
John Dotson
Right, exactly.
- [49:21]
Jordan Schneider
So like.
- [49:23]
John Dotson
You know, maybe they have a gumar that they trust instead. I don't know.
- [49:28]
Jordan Schneider
They're just chatting with Deep Seek man. They're, they got their, they got their AI companions To keep them warm at night.
- [49:33]
John Dotson
Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly.
- [49:36]
Jordan Schneider
All right, let's end it there. John, always a pleasure. Yeah. Oh, who's got. Should we curse someone who's getting. Who's getting the ax next?
- [49:48]
John Dotson
Yeah, now that I've got the reverse Midas touch. Right?
- [49:54]
Jordan Schneider
Totally safe. He's doing a great job. Five, five. Five stars. Performance economies. Economies.
- [50:04]
John Dotson
Cooking.
- [50:04]
Jordan Schneider
What could he be gotten for?
- [50:06]
John Dotson
I. So I did get a similar text message from the. From the same friend the morning after. It's like, John, it's like every. Everybody you name. It's like, you know, it's. It's like a curse. They're. They're. They're. They're toast.
- [50:21]
Jordan Schneider
Yeah. All right.
- [50:22]
John Dotson
It's just part of.
- [50:23]
Jordan Schneider
Very excited for the song I'm about to make. We're gonna. We're gonna take the pla. We're gonna take some of the words from the. Or the. The colorful phrasing from that PLA article and turn it into the.
- [50:34]
John Dotson
The best genre article. And the best line from that article I thought was about how it doesn't take, you know, three layers when they're talking about corruption in the military thing.
- [50:45]
Jordan Schneider
Yeah, yeah.
- [50:46]
John Dotson
It doesn't take three days to accumulate three. It doesn't take a day to accumulate three feet of ice, nor does it take a day to extract three feet of ice. Right. And I was thinking about that as I was shoveling out my car yesterday here in Washington, D.C. i was like, man, this is going to take forever.
- [51:03]
Jordan Schneider
So, so what's the takeaway there? It's like, guys, you know, look, we're just doing our job here. Like, we're. It's all the same thing. We're not. It's.
- [51:11]
John Dotson
That's not how the system works. Right. It's not police procedural. Right. You don't just. You don't just follow the facts and follow the money. It's always politicized there. Right? And. And, you know, like we were talking about before, you know, that they're corrupt. So it's just a question of, okay, who. Who do I want. Who do I want to go after? Who do I feel like I need a pretext to go after? Right. And that's the. That's the mystery. That's the. That's the trillion dollar question everyone is puzzling over.
- [51:37]
Jordan Schneider
All right, I think we'll call it there.
- [51:40]
John Dotson
Yeah.
- [51:40]
Jordan Schneider
Stay warm if you're gonna.
- [51:48]
PLA Daily/Official Statement Reader
Punishing corruption has no forbidden zones. Full coverage and zero tolerance, however many are involved will be investigated. And however deep it goes, we won't Take that deep we have rocked solid determination to to carry the anti corruption struggle through to the end. No matter who it is and no matter how high their position. Anyone engaged in corruption will never be tolerated. They seriously trampled upon and undermined the CMC chairman responsibility system. They seriously fueled threats to the party's absolute leaders over the military and endangered the party's governing foundation. We will politically return to the start and clear the origins I Elijah to purge, poison and eliminate maladies and organizationally cut up, rot and grow, renew flesh. We will push the people's army to shed its feathers and be reborn. Corruption is a tie for blocking the vote and a stumbling block in the development of the party.
- [53:12]
John Dotson
Nation.
- [53:13]
PLA Daily/Official Statement Reader
Anti corruption is a major struggle we cannot afford to lose and absolutely must not. We will dig deep and investigate thoroughly and eradicating thieval must be complete through tempering, forging we'll fall abims and making innovations we firmly protected the roots and soul the more we fight corruption the stronger, purer and more combat capable we become. Three feet of ice. Cause in four when one day's cold and we're moving three feet of ice also cannot be accomplished in one day. Curry concentrated investigation of corruption problems is not a case of the more we fight, the more corruption there is but rather the deeper we dig, the more we find the great giant history surges for one process of strengthening the nation and the day cannot be stopped.
- [54:42]
John Dotson
No.
- [54:42]
PLA Daily/Official Statement Reader
Storms of trials can shake the people's armies rock solid conviction of iron heart and loyalty to the party we will sweep away all negative and corrupt phenomenal we will further lock power inside the cage of institutions we focus on a rat eradicating the soil and conditions that we corrupt sun we must consciously guard and protect a defensive line of thought a thorough light of coward use the red light of law and discipline and the boundary line of family condor.