Inside China’s Top Leadership: Intensifying Crackdowns and a Missing Succession Plan

Commentary

Internal power struggles within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have intensified to an unprecedented level since the beginning of the year.

In January, Chinese leader Xi Jinping reportedly moved against Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) Zhang Youxia, a development some observers compare to the 1971 Lin Biao incident, underscoring the depth of tensions at the top. Lin was a vice chairman of the CMC and the official successor to former CCP leader Mao Zedong. Lin died in a suspicious plane crash over the Mongolian desert. After his death, Mao condemned Lin as a traitor and a counter-revolutionary.

In the second half of the year, leadership reshuffles across all 31 provincial-level party committees will begin, followed by the scheduled 21st Party Congress next year. As these key political milestones approach, competition for positions and efforts to block rivals are expected to intensify, and factional maneuvering will become increasingly fierce.

Against this backdrop, this commentary focuses on two key dynamics shaping the current political landscape.

Senior Cadres Targeted in Massive Purges

On April 23, China’s top anti-corruption body—the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI)—reported that in the first quarter of 2026 alone, 30 provincial- and ministerial-level officials were placed under investigation, along with 1,267 bureau-level officials. Additionally, 56 provincial- and ministerial-level cadres were disciplined, facing penalties ranging from warnings and demotions to expulsion.

The number of senior officials disciplined in this one quarter alone was four times the figure for the same period in 2025 (14 people) and nearly matched the total of 69 people at the same level disciplined for all of 2025.

Notably, the report did not specify the number of “centrally managed cadres” under investigation. These officials have their careers directly controlled by the CCP’s central leadership, and the category extends beyond provincial- and ministerial-level officials. It also includes key figures in critical posts below those ranks, making them the core of the CCP’s cadre system.

According to Xiao Pei, a deputy head of the CCDI, 553 centrally managed cadres were investigated nationwide between 2012 and 2022—about 55 per year on average. After Xi secured an unprecedented third term at the 20th Party Congress in 2022, the number of cadres investigated surged—87 cases in 2023, 92 cases in 2024, and 181 cases in 2025—an average of 120 per year over the past three years, more than double the previous decade’s average.

Because centrally managed cadres form the backbone of the CCP elite, the sharp rise in investigations is widely seen as a sign of intensifying internal political struggle. The reshuffling of local and provincial-level officials is expected to intensify in the second half of 2026 and the first half of 2027, as it is a critical part of the political choreography leading up to the 21st CCP National Congress in late 2027.

No Successor, Aging Leadership

Throughout its history, the CCP has typically placed great importance on grooming a successor system—and ensuring that successors are relatively young. Take the three most recent CCP top leaders as examples: Jiang Zemin took power in 1989 at age 63, Hu Jintao in 2002 at age 60, and Xi in 2012 at age 59.

Xi has effectively abandoned the successor system after he secured his third term at the 20th National Congress. Two figures once widely seen as potential successors—Sun Zhengcai and Hu Chunhua—were sidelined, with Sun later jailed and Hu removed from the Politburo.

Beyond that, Xi has also been seen as holding back the promotion of younger officials, particularly those born in the 1970s, whom he views as potential threats to his position. As of now, the youngest full ministerial-level official is Shanxi Gov. Lu Dongliang, born in December 1973. Several officials were born in 1970, including: A Dong, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League; Liu Jie, governor of eastern Zhejiang Province; Wei Tao, governor of southern Guangxi Province; Liu Xiaotao, governor of eastern Jiangsu Province; and Zhang Chengzhong, minister of emergency management.

The lack of younger officials at the top has created a generational gap, accelerating the aging of the leadership. For comparison, the average age of the Politburo Standing Committee—the Party’s top decision-making body—under Hu Jintao was 62, while the current lineup from the 20th Party Congress averages 65.1—the oldest since the 1990s, when almost all the CCP’s first-generation leaders, except Liu Huaqing, stepped down from the central leadership. Liu relinquished his posts as a member of the Politburo and as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission in 1997, at age 81.

Concluding Thoughts

Xi has often been described as the “accelerator” of the CCP’s decline—a label that fits well.

On the one hand, by scrapping the successor system, Xi has left the Party’s top leadership—lacking democratic mechanisms—without a clear contingency plan, increasing the risk of instability in the event of an unexpected crisis. On the other hand, he has retained key loyalists in important positions beyond the typical retirement age, including Foreign Minister Wang Yi, 72, and Procurator-General Ying Yong, 69.

Together, this puts Xi and his factions in the crosshairs of the CCP’s intense infighting. With no clear mechanism to resolve factional conflict, the struggle risks becoming a zero-sum game in which all sides face high stakes.

From this perspective, regardless of Xi’s intentions to consolidate personal power or to maintain the CCP’s rule, his policies may end up intensifying internal divisions and accelerating the CCP’s collapse.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.