Text taken from the Telegram channel of China80s
[ColonelCassad] The personnel results of the plenum turned out to be completely different from what was expected. Even in the first days, I had a thought that something loud would be thrown into the information space in order to distract the public from the controversial results of the plenum.
(It's like after the congress, everyone discussed not the fundamentally important decisions in the area of reform of party and state bodies, but the rather formal re-election of Xi Jinping for a third term as Chairman of the PRC.)
So. On the one hand, nothing of the sort happened. On the other hand, the final documents of the plenum recorded something much more important.
Namely: for the first time, Xi Jinping himself named an "inner circle" of only three people with whom he shared responsibility for the final decisions.
Previously, another trend was observed: the glorification of the "party core" (Xi Jinping) by obscuring all those close to him. It is no coincidence that Xi Jinping is the first leader in the history of the PRC who has never had a "successor" figure around him (even Mao Zedong always had one).
And then suddenly, “In November 2023, the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee decided to form a working group to prepare documents for the 3rd Plenum of the 20th CPC Central Committee, which I headed. Comrades Wang Huning, Cai Qi and Ding Xuexiang acted as deputy heads of the group…”
The composition of this peculiar “small council” (greetings to J. Martin!) is logical in its own way:
Wang Huning (formally the number 4 person in the party hierarchy) is the chief intellectual and ideologist of the CPC, the “mentor of the three emperors”, we wrote a lot about him before the congress, so we will not repeat ourselves. This is the person who is responsible for the meanings in the current Communist Party.
Cai Qi (formally person No. 5) is a unique leader in the history of the CPC, being both the first on the list of secretaries of the Secretariat and the head of the Office of the Central Committee of the CPC. In other words, the "gray cardinal" who has taken charge of the issues of coordinating work within the Central Committee.
Ding Xuexiang (formally person No. 6) is the youngest member of the Politburo Standing Committee, and therefore the only one who can be considered, with a stretch, the "successor" of Xi Jinping. By primary position: First Vice Premier of the State Council of the PRC.
And here's what's interesting. There is a Vice Premier in this "inner circle" who was engaged in determining socio-economic policy for the coming years. But there is no Premier himself.
Although it was about this Premier (Li Qiang) that they said that his main advantage was the complete personal trust in him on the part of Xi Jinping.
Perhaps Li Qiang, unlike the triumvirate of Wang-Cai-Ding, is not as skilled in writing conceptual documents. Or he managed to disappoint his boss. But the very fact that the number 2 person in the party hierarchy, as well as two other high-ranking party members, Xi Jinping did not name among his co-authors, can say a lot.
First of all, it means that at the top of the CPC there are now no "feudal fiefdoms" in which their curator would have full powers. Xi Jinping himself took on the most important area of work, but was forced to share responsibility with his closest associates. (This is an argument in favor of the same thesis about the difficulties that Xi faced).
Secondly, it is among the "chosen ones" that we need to look for those who play a particularly significant role in Chinese politics.
In terms of age, only Ding Xuexiang (born in 1962) has prospects. Wang Huning and Cai Qi are the same age, born in 1955 — almost the same age as Xi Jinping. In the old days, according to the rule "67 — yes, 68 — no", they would have been sent into retirement at the next congress (already in 2027).
Now the old conventions have been discarded, so Cai Qi can continue to run the secretariat and the chancery (although he can also rise a couple of lines in the conditional party hierarchy, heading the NPC Standing Committee). But Ding Xuexiang's current position, it turns out, clearly does not correspond to his true weight. Therefore, we should expect his promotion following the results of the next congress.