Armed Troops & Tanks Take Beijing Streets: Xi vs Zhang, Who Emerges Victorious?

Beijing enters wartime control. Tanks and armed soldiers appear on streets. Xi Jinping shows up to signal. He still holds full power, but the military remains silent, waiting for uprising. The power struggle between Xi Jinping and Zhang Yuxia. Who is the winner? The poverty trap in China, fully exposed. CCP officials secretly delight while the bottom class falls into utter despair. Home prices in 70 cities plunge sharply, borrowing money just to sell homes becomes a new trend. A wave of mortgage default sweeps across China. The Chinese Communist Party launches a new wave of attacks on Shen Yun, turning itself into an international laughingstock. Welcome to today's episode of Decoding China. Everything you need to understand the latest developments is right here. Beijing enters wartime control. Tanks and armed soldiers appear on streets. Xi Jinping shows up to signal. He still holds full power, but the military remains silent, waiting for uprising. The situation in Beijing can now be described as taut as a drawn bow, no longer something that can be concealed by handshakes or staged photo opportunities. The investigation and arrest of Zhang Yuxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and Liu Zhenli, chief of the Joint Staff Department, has not only sent shockwaves through the Chinese military, but has also pushed Beijing into a de facto semi-lockdown, semi-wartime posture, without any formal declaration. Numerous residents reported being unable to enter Beijing, while the area around Tiananmen Square was saturated with police vehicles and multiple roads were sealed off. Although Beijing has not formally declared martial law, the city has effectively entered a wartime lockdown state. Videos circulating on social media show PLA units from multiple regions requisitioning highways and moving toward the capital, with long convoys of military vehicles an image starkly at odds with the stability narrative projected by official media. This immediately raised a key question among observers. If this were merely an ordinary anti-corruption case, why would Beijing respond with military-level security measures? The answer lies in the fact that the case does not involve individual wrongdoing alone. It cuts directly into the core of political power. Within the CCP system, overall stability overrides everything else. When the center of power experiences a severe shock, especially one that may involve the personal safety of the supreme leader, the primary task is not clarification or accountability, but the manufacture of an illusion that the regime remains firm and intact. In this logic, the public appearance of the top leader is the cheapest yet most effective stabilizing tool. It was under these circumstances that, on January 27th, Xi Jinping and his wife appeared at the Great Hall of the People to meet Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo. The symbolism was unmistakable. Domestically, Xi was signaling that he remained free, secure, and in control. Internationally, Beijing was projecting the image of a government still capable of conducting normal diplomacy. Yet the anomaly was equally striking. Xi's appearance was not followed by the usual wave of loyalty declarations from the military. According to Chinese scholar Liu Juning, on January 26th, the Central Military Commission ordered a full military lockdown, with all units instructed to remain in place and forbidden from independent movement. However, realities on the ground contradicted this directive. In Tengzhou, Beijing, long columns of soldiers were seen marching on major roads. In Chuzhou, armed troops carrying live ammunition were redeployed for defensive positioning. In some areas, tanks appeared on city streets, forcing civilian vehicles to yield entirely to military traffic. Most alarming was the collective silence of the military leadership. Commanders and political commissars of theater commands, along with provincial and municipal party secretaries, figures who normally rush to demonstrate allegiance, issued no public statements pledging loyalty to Xi Jinping. In a CCP system where political signaling is a survival instinct, such synchronized silence is profoundly dangerous. These tremors did not emerge from nowhere. In earlier years, Xi Jinping relied on his longtime ally Wang Qishan, former head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, to launch the anti-corruption campaign when Xi's authority was still insecure. But once Xi consolidated absolute power, Wang Qishan was sidelined, stripped of real influence. The same pattern has now reappeared. Zhang Youxiao was a key military pillar who supported Xi Jinping's unprecedented third term at the 20th Party Congress in 2022, helping Xi break long-standing succession norms. Today, Zhang himself has become the target of arrest and investigation. According to Liu Junying, the Party has dispatched more than 50 disciplinary officials into the military, with over 2,000 officers expected to be purged, reassigned, or forced into retirement. Canada-based Chinese writer Sheng Shui reports that the number of military personnel detained in connection with the Zhang case may have reached 5,000. Against this backdrop, the Wall Street Journal reported allegations that Zhang Youxiao had leaked core nuclear weapons information. Many analysts question the claim's credibility, arguing that if such a crime were genuine, Beijing's handling and propaganda rhythm would look entirely different. Instead, the accusation appears more like an attempt to brand Zhang as a traitor, a charge designed to sever sympathy and alliances within the military, rather than a serious national security case. Political commentator Wang Yukun has warned that by taking down Zhang Youxiao and Liu Zhenli, Xi Jinping has effectively placed himself atop a volcano, with an extremely perilous future ahead. When a system that relies on fear to survive begins to find that people are no longer quite so afraid, it is often only one misjudgment, one accidental shot, or one moment of lost control away from a genuine, systemic upheaval. The day of the CCP's collapse is not far away. The power struggle between Xi Jinping and Zhang Youxiao. Who is the winner? A spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party's Ministry of National Defense announced that Zhang Youxiao, Politburo member and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, CMC, and Liu Zhenli, CMC member and chief of the Joint Staff Department, were placed under investigation for serious violations of discipline and law. On the surface, the downfall of Zhang Youxiao and Liu Zhenli appears to indicate that Xi Jinping has regained the upper hand. But in essence, the Xijiang struggle has no winner. This was never about anti-corruption, but a life-and-death fight over control of the military, the final pillar of power in the CCP system. After the 20th Party Congress in 2022, Xi Jinping forced through his third term and established a new seven-member Central Military Commission. Yet less than six months later, Xi launched a massive purge within the People's Liberation Army. It began with the rocket force and rapidly expanded to the CMC Equipment Development Department and major state-owned defense conglomerates. One senior general after another fell, the most prominent being Li Shangfu, then defense minister and CMC member. Li Shangfu was widely regarded as a trusted subordinate of Zhang Youxiao, having served for years under Zhang's authority. After Li's removal, a series of senior officers who had once worked under Zhang in the Equipment Development Department were also taken down, making it unmistakably clear that the purge was now directly aimed at Zhang Youxiao himself. The CMC's first vice chairman. At the same time, He Weidong, Xi's closest military confidant and another CMC vice chairman, repeatedly confronted Zhang Youxiao openly, further intensifying internal tensions. The signal was clear, Xi was moving to neutralize Zhang's power base. Between 2024 and 2025, the balance temporarily shifted. During the third plenum of the 20th Central Committee in July 2024, Xi suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. Zhang Youxiao seized the moment, aligning with dissatisfied party elders, Red Second Generation, elites, and senior military officers to launch a counteroffensive. As a result, several of Xi's key military loyalists, including Miao Hua and He Weidong, were removed. By the time of the fourth plenum, Xi's military network had been almost entirely dismantled. At that point, real military power had effectively passed into Zhang Youxiao's hands, while Xi retained only his formal titles. But Xi was unwilling to accept being hollowed out. He feared that Zhang would eventually move to remove him outright and therefore waited for an opportunity to strike back. Xi ultimately chose to strike first, using the internal security apparatus controlled by his loyalists to deal a decisive blow to Zhang Youxiao and Liu Zhenli, then swiftly announcing the investigations to create a fait accompli and prevent a chain reaction inside the military. As a result, of the seven members of the 20th term Central Military Commission, five have now been purged, leaving only Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin. The CMC that Xi personally built has been virtually wiped out. The scale of the purge is unprecedented. During Xi's first and second terms, more than 160 generals were investigated. In just over three years of his third term, including Zhang Youxiao and Liu Zhenli, 133 more generals were taken down. In total, nearly 300 generals have been purged under Xi, more than the combined number of generals lost since the PLA's founding in 1927 through civil wars, foreign wars, and the Cultural Revolution. The root cause lies in the CCP's inherited philosophy of struggle, passed down from Karl Marx. The person who internalized this doctrine most thoroughly was Mao Zedong, who famously summarized it as, Struggle against heaven brings endless joy. Struggle against the earth brings endless joy. Struggle against people brings endless joy. After coming to power, Xi Jinping sought to become a second Mao Zedong, imitating Mao's methods and engaging in non-stop internal struggle. This makes one fact unmistakably clear. Within the CCP's logic of protecting the party and perpetual struggle, no one is safe. Any senior official in Zhongnanhai who hopes to escape this endless cycle of mutual destruction must take history as a mirror. They must abandon Marx's philosophy of struggle, abandon the CCP's meat grinder system of life and death purges, and abandon a party that has degenerated into one of the most corrupt organizations on earth. The Chinese Communist Party, Zhang Yuxia is now 76 years old. He devoted his entire life to the CCP, risked his life on real battlefields, and yet today his fate remains unknown. This painful lesson is one that any senior official who may become a future leader of China must reflect on deeply. The poverty trap in China, fully exposed, CCP officials secretly delight while the bottom class falls into utter despair. While the CCP and Xi Jinping are preoccupied with fierce internal struggles, China's socioeconomic situation is plunging into a severe crisis. Poverty among the Chinese people has gone far beyond what most people can imagine. Many people equate poverty with laziness. They simply don't understand that for far too many people in this world, their entire life is spent fighting with all their strength just for the most basic survival. At Laojun Mountain Scenic Area, in Henan Province, mountain porters were seen carrying loads under normal conditions. One person carries four to six cases at a time, equivalent to 50 to 75 kilograms. They climb steep mountain paths continuously, trading physical strength for pay calculated per trip. If they slow down, they earn nothing. If they fall ill, their only source of income disappears. In major cities, the situation for workers is no better. In the delivery industry, food couriers brave wind and rain, delivering thousands of packages every day. A deputy division chief from Beijing's Human Resources and Social Security Bureau once personally experienced this job. After running deliveries for 12 straight hours, he earned only 41 yuan. One order took a full hour and paid just 6.6 yuan, and the platform deducted 60% of that amount. Only then did he understand why delivery workers pushed themselves to the limit, trying to take 10 or even dozens of orders per hour. Yet even after running themselves into exhaustion, many still cannot save any money by the end of the month. In the financial sector, ordinary tellers face enormous performance pressure, work long hours, and yet receive unremarkable incomes. Ride-hailing drivers spend more than 10 hours a day inside their cars, bearing fuel costs, maintenance, and vehicle depreciation out of their own pockets. In rural areas, farmers toil with their faces to the soil and their backs to the sky, growing grain and vegetables, only to have purchase prices forced down to extremely low levels, leaving profits too thin to sustain production. In the retail sector, small shop owners, the people seen every day on the street, struggle to survive three years of pandemic lockdowns. Just as business began to show signs of recovery, they were crushed by online giants using low-price dumping tactics. Inventory piled up, cash flow suffocated, while major platforms, relying on monopoly advantages, continued to reap enormous profits. The same pattern appears across countless industries. The hard work of ordinary people ultimately becomes a tool for others to accumulate wealth. Chinese society is one in which 95% of the population supports a life of extreme comfort for the remaining 5%. Most people can rely only on their labor to survive. Yet the results of that labor do not belong to them. In Europe and North America, labor costs are consistently high. Even for basic work such as mowing lawns, shoveling snow, or maintaining gardens. Ordinary workers can earn $100 to $200 for a day's work. This is not a matter of technical skill, but of income distribution mechanisms. When labor is valued highly, the wealthy must pay a fair price to hire workers. And the poor can rely on their labor to sustain life and gradually improve their living conditions. Developed countries share a common feature. Labor is expensive, while goods are relatively cheap. Workers can live on their wages, afford housing, medical care, and education for their children. Underdeveloped systems show the opposite pattern. Labor is cheap, while the cost of living is high. People sell their labor at extremely low prices, yet must buy goods and services at ever-rising costs. Under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, mainland China suffers from a severe distribution paradox. The CCP possesses enormous power to mobilize resources and accumulate wealth. Yet the share of household income in GDP has remained at the lower end of global levels for many years. Most of society's wealth does not flow to workers, but concentrates within the power apparatus, state-owned enterprises, monopoly conglomerates, and image-driven showcase projects. Wealth in China moves in only one direction, from the people upward into the ruling system, with no return path. Workers are compressed into the lowest cost input. They become highways that may never recover their costs, lavish overseas aid programs, luxurious government office buildings, and figures buried in corruption scandals. The CCP constantly promotes slogans about surpassing Japan, unifying Taiwan, and becoming a global superpower. But real development is not measured by the number of aircraft carriers, nor by how many flags are planted on the moon. Real development means that even a street sweeper or a breakfast vendor can afford housing, medical care, and education for their children, living with dignity. In Taiwan and Japan, national wealth is distributed more broadly among ordinary people. Minimum wages there exceed the income of most white-collar workers in China. Employers must pay a price that matches human dignity if they wish to hire labor. In China, however, ordinary people live harder lives than anyone else. The CCP appears glamorous, while the people struggle just to survive. When despair spreads among the population, it becomes a clear warning sign of social collapse. Home prices in 70 cities plunge sharply. Borrowing money just to sell homes becomes a new trend. A wave of mortgage default sweeps across China. China's real estate market continues to deteriorate, with the property sector entering a severe winter. Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China on January 19, 2026, show that home sales in 2025 were cut in half compared with the 2021 peak, falling to 8.4 trillion yuan, approximately 1.17 trillion U.S. dollars. Over the same period, real estate investment and total floor space sold collapsed across the board, with declines spreading nationwide. In December 2025, the secondary housing market fell even more sharply. Year-on-year price declines reached 6.1 percent, the steepest drop in 15 months. All Tier 1 cities recorded significant losses. Beijing saw prices plunge 8.5 percent, Guangzhou fell 7.8 percent, while Shanghai and Shenzhen dropped 6.1 percent and 5.4 percent respectively. Cities once regarded as the last strongholds of China's housing market failed to hold their ground. During the same month, across 70 major cities, real estate investment fell 36.3 percent year-on-year. New home sales volumes declined 15.5 percent, while sales value plunged 23.6 percent. Transactions continued to shrink, capital flowed out of the sector, and unsold inventory expanded rapidly. Despite these figures, Chinese state media continued to emphasize that the month-on-month decline in new home prices in Tier 1 cities has narrowed, framing it as a sign that the housing market is stabilizing and rebounding. Conditions reported by homeowners and brokers, however, point to intensifying stress. Many homeowners say they are no longer able to service their mortgages. One case describes an apartment now valued at 1 million yuan, about 139,000 U.S. dollars, while outstanding bank debt exceeds 1.3 million yuan, about 181,000 U.S. dollars. The monthly mortgage payment stands at 6,400 yuan, about 890 U.S. dollars. The homeowner said he could neither repay the loan nor sell the property, calling becoming a bad debtor in 2026 the first thing accomplished this year. In numerous residential compounds, collective fire sales are unfolding. One owner purchased an apartment in 2020 for 1 million yuan, about 139,000 U.S. dollars, with a floor area of 108 square meters. After property titles were issued, more than 1,000 units in the same complex were listed for sale simultaneously. As all owners rushed to exit, transaction prices dropped to around 500,000 yuan, about 69,000 U.S. dollars, while the remaining bank loan still stood at 660,000 yuan, about 92,000 U.S. dollars. Under such conditions, the phrase borrowing money just to sell a home has begun circulating among agents and sellers. Recently, some Chinese media outlets reported that banks have started refusing to take over defaulted properties. In certain cases, homeowners have stopped making payments for one to two years, yet banks have neither seized the property nor initiated foreclosure. Branch managers reportedly call regularly and even bring gifts. Asking borrowers to repay only a small amount annually, attempting to avoid absorbing additional unsellable assets. Analysts warn that if housing prices continue to fall, the situation where property values drop below outstanding mortgage balances will spread further. Owners will be forced to dump properties at any price, accelerating declines. Middle-class households, which carry the highest mortgage exposure, face the most direct impact. Falling incomes, mass layoffs, and even corporate bankruptcies threaten job security, pushing more borrowers into default. Mortgage delinquencies are rising, leading to clusters of court auction properties, while auction transaction rates remain below 20 percent. The crisis has also engulfed property developers. According to data from Wind, a mainland China financial data provider, as of January 20th, 2026, 27 real estate companies had released earnings forecasts or preliminary results for 2025. 26 of them reported losses, with total losses ranging from 47.546 billion to 62.464 billion yuan, approximately 6.6 to 8.7 billion U.S. dollars. Notably, Waxia Fortune and Greenland Holdings each recorded losses exceeding 10 billion yuan, over 1.39 billion U.S. dollars, underscoring the severe exhaustion of China's real estate sector. The Chinese Communist Party launches a new wave of attacks on Shen Yun, turning itself into an international laughingstock. The U.S.-based Shen Yun Performing Arts is currently touring around the world. This year, the Chinese Communist Party has continued to escalate its attacks against Shen Yun through official statements, anonymous emails, and other coordinated tactics. These actions have unfolded in parallel with Shen Yun's global tour schedule, revealing an increasingly open and reckless campaign of transnational harassment. In stark contrast to these acts of sabotage, performances by Shen Yun Performing Arts have continued to sell out in many countries and regions. In Taiwan alone, Shen Yun has performed in multiple cities, with nearly every show completely sold out. Numerous politicians and prominent figures have sent congratulatory letters, floral tributes, and messages of praise, recognizing both the artistic excellence of Shen Yun and the cultural values it conveys. On January 8th, the Shen Yun ticketing office in Taiwan received an email impersonating Taiwan's Minister of the Interior. The message threatened that if the performances continued, serious acts of violence would occur, including the assassination of the president and the bombing of the presidential office building. Following an investigation, authorities confirmed that the threat was fabricated and had no factual basis. Such threatening emails were not an isolated incident. Since December of last year, anonymous messages with nearly identical content have been sent to Shen Yun ticketing systems in France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. All were later confirmed to be false terror threats aimed at creating fear and disrupting performances. At the same time, CCP diplomatic missions in London, Argentina, Sydney, and Melbourne issued statements attacking Shen Yun. These statements were then amplified by Beijing-controlled media outlets and online 50-cent commentators spreading across overseas social media platforms and forming a coordinated chain of propaganda and harassment. Chinese-Australian legal scholar Yuan Hongbing stated that in early January 2026, the CCP's consulate general in Sydney publicly released a hostile statement targeting Shen Yun. According to him, this action clearly demonstrates the CCP's use of diplomatic institutions to carry out transnational repression while also constituting a crude interference in the internal affairs of the host country and an infringement on its national sovereignty. Shen Yun, headquartered in New York, was founded in 2006 by artists who went into exile after being persecuted for practicing Falun Gong. The company's mission is to revive and promote China's 5,000-year-old traditional, divinely-inspired culture. Its performances feature ancient legends, historical stories, and figures from different dynasties, as well as contemporary narratives reflecting faith, conscience, and moral courage. According to multiple sources, over the past two years, the tactics used against Shen Yun have significantly escalated, ranging from violent threats and legal warfare to media attacks, manipulation of online influencers, and identity impersonation. These actions are believed to be part of a campaign directed from the highest levels of the CCP aimed at smearing Falun Gong and Shen Yun overseas. Writer Chang Pinchao pointed out that the CCP shows no concern about being ridiculed on the international stage, even while fully aware that its wolf-warrior diplomacy and related tactics are scorned by professional diplomats worldwide. Beijing still believes it can counter the spiritual and moral values represented by Shen Yun through thuggish methods. In reality, he said, the international community has long seen through such behavior. Many audience members have said that after watching Shen Yun, they were deeply moved by the beauty and compassion expressed in the performances. They question why a program that celebrates traditional culture and universal values is prohibited from performing in mainland China. People familiar with the matter revealed that major theaters in many countries have long communicated privately and are well aware of Shen Yun's high artistic quality. The CCP's use of diplomatic channels, threat emails, and organized harassment to prevent people in free societies from enjoying a cultural performance has only further exposed its nature, becoming a subject of ridicule within international cultural circles. We'd love to hear your perspective. Leave a comment below and share your thoughts. If you found this video helpful, please share it with your friends. Your support keeps us going and inspires us to deliver even better content. Don't forget to like and subscribe for more in-depth analysis from Decoding China. Thank you for watching.