Xi Jinping Isolated in Fierce Factional Civil War, Zhang & Liu Still Hold Power!

She forced to release Zhang Yuxia. Zhang and Liu retained their positions amid fierce factional civil war. Totalitarian China is approaching an irreversible tipping point. Suspected mastermind behind Li Keqiang's murder was appointed before Zhang Yuxia's arrest. Xi Jinping isolated spiraling toward a death spiral. The strangest spring festival travel rush of 2026. Tickets sold out, yet high-speed trains running empty. Strange phenomenon ahead of the 2026 Lunar New Year. Overnight, yellow lanterns everywhere. Beijing turns yellow. Netizens warn, an ominous sign. China's memory prices soar, driving price hikes in smartphones, computers and automobiles. United States exposes CCP's secret nuclear tests, strategic pressure mounts. Welcome to today's episode of Decoding China. Everything you need to understand She forced to release Zhang Yuxia. Zhang and Liu retained their positions amid fierce factional civil war. Totalitarian China is approaching an irreversible tipping point. On February 4th, in Beijing, the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress convened an unscheduled session. Ahead of the meeting, the state propaganda system deliberately floated signals that the qualifications of certain deputies would be reviewed. Yet after the meeting concluded, no action followed. The NPC delegate status of senior generals Zhang Yuxia and Liu Zhenli remained untouched. Their key positions within the Central Military Commission, including vice chairman of the CMC and CMC member, were left entirely intact. There were no disciplinary announcements, no removals, no internal disposals. No boot came down. Pro-democracy activist Tang Baikiao posted on the X platform that according to his sources within the CCP, several Politburo members at a recent meeting openly questioned the legitimacy of arresting Zhang Yuxia and Liu Zhenli and called for corrections, an appeal that reportedly gained support from others present. This procedural bottleneck became a direct challenge to Xi Jinping. In addition, there are widespread rumors that various generals and opposing factions are pressuring Xi Jinping to release Zhang Yuxia. It is clear that this internal war is far from over. The February 4th incident reflects a new reality. China's authoritarian machine is no longer a seamless monolith. It is entering a phase of structural stagnation. Commands are no longer executed instantly. Political will no longer convert smoothly into action. The system governs through fear, yet is increasingly paralyzed by that same fear. At a deeper level, the economic foundation that once underwrote the regime's legitimacy is rapidly eroding. For decades, the Chinese Communist Party did not rule through elections or constitutionalism, but through an implicit bargain, economic growth in exchange for political obedience. That bargain is now breaking down. The real estate bubble has burst, and land-based fiscal revenues are drying up. Youth unemployment has become structural. Middle-class confidence has collapsed. Private enterprises face systematic suppression, while foreign capital continues to exit. Consumers refuse to spend. Companies refuse to invest. And the wealthy no longer dare to keep their assets inside the country. This is no longer a cyclical downturn. It is a structural termination of the growth model itself. The fiscal crisis further exposes the hollowing out of the state. Local government debt has ballooned. Grassroots finances have become zombified. Public services are shrinking, and wage arrears are increasingly common. The state no longer functions as a creator of wealth, but as an extractor. Enforcement has been financialized, governance fee-ized, and society bled to keep the apparatus running. Parallel to economic decline is a broad social withdrawal. Young people no longer believe effort can change their fate. They opt out of competition, of marriage, of childbirth, of public life. Silence becomes the safest choice. For those with the means, emigration becomes a survival strategy. When a society loses its sense of the future, it does not explode. It hemorrhages slowly. Demographic freefall, shrinking tax bases, innovation exhaustion, and the steady evaporation of national vitality. At the same time, society is being deeply atomized. Public space is destroyed. Associative capacity dismantled. Interpersonal trust eroded. On the surface, order appears intact. In reality, the system is profoundly fragile. Because without community, there is no capacity for self-repair. Cynicism becomes the dominant mindset. No resistance, no belief, only self-preservation. At the apex of power, the self-destructive logic of totalitarian politics is accelerating. Power has been personalized to an extreme degree. Institutional succession has been dismantled, and collective leadership reduced to a shell, with Xi Jinping monopolizing all authority. The bureaucracy no longer corrects errors. It only signals loyalty. Information is filtered upward, while risk is pushed downward. Purges have become normalized. Anti-corruption is no longer a governance tool, but a mechanism of power struggle within the CCP. In the military, political security overrides professional competence. As the elite ceases to trust itself, the regime's stability begins to rot from within. Suspected mastermind behind Li Keqiang's murder was appointed before Zhang Yuxia's arrest. Xi Jinping isolated, spiraling toward a death spiral. After Zhang Yuxia's fall, it triggered major shockwaves within the military. Even more strikingly, before his arrest, a bizarre scene unfolded in Beijing. According to official CCP media reports, the position of Beijing Garrison District Commander, vacant for nearly a year, had already been filled by Chen Yuan, former commander of the Shanghai Armed Police Corps, prior to the arrests of Zhang and Liu. The Beijing Garrison District controls the vital capital region, raising speculation whether this personnel change was part of Xi Jinping's preparations to arrest Zhang and Liu. Public records show that Chen Yuan, 53, is a native of Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, the same hometown as former Central Military Commission Vice Chairman, He Weidong. Chen Yuan spent most of his career in the armed police system and served as commander of the Shanghai Armed Police Corps before being transferred to lead the Beijing Garrison District. Shen Mingxi, a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research at Taiwan's National Defense University, commented, the replacement of the Beijing Garrison District Commander and the fact that this person has been rumored to have been involved in the murder case of Li Keqiang makes it even clearer that he belongs to He Weidong's faction. This indicates that after the purge of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, Xi Jinping may now heavily rely on personnel from He Weidong's or Miaohua's networks. Following the developments with Zhang Youxia, attention has returned to He Weidong, the vice chairman who disappeared from public view last October. Recent rumors claim that he met an untimely end by his own hand. The position of Central Military Commission Vice Chairman is now regarded as extremely high risk. On the afternoon of February 6th, the Central Military Commission held a New Year cultural performance in Beijing to extend greetings to retired senior cadres of Beijing-based military units. CMC Chairman Xi Jinping watched the performance and greeted the retired military cadres. CCTV footage of the scene shows that when Xi Jinping entered the venue, he was clearly limping noticeably in one leg and the symptom appeared more severe than before. Behind him, only CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin accompanied him. In previous years, the high-ranking CMC members who had appeared alongside him, Zhang Youxia, He Weidong, Liu Zhenli, Zhang Shengmin and Miaohua have now all fallen. The on-site footage reveals several burly men in military uniforms mixed in among the retired senior cadres. Although they clapped along with the elderly, these young men stood out sharply among the retirees. Their expressions were tense, they wore earpieces and their eyes constantly scanned the entire venue. Particularly when Xi Jinping was shaking hands with the retired cadres, one particularly burly man appeared especially nervous. His gaze fixed intently on every person shaking hands with Xi. Compared to previous years, the number of current CMC members and veteran military figures accompanying Xi at the performance has drastically decreased. At the January 17, 2025 cultural performance, 10 CMC members and veteran military figures accompanied Xi, including CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and He Weidong and CMC members Liu Zhenli and Miaohua. All of them have now been arrested. Dong Jun, as the current Minister of National Defense, stood among the retired senior cadres during the greeting event, clapping while tightly pursing his lips and staring at Xi's every move. During the performance, Dong Jun's position was inconspicuous. He was seated only in the third row from the back. Independent commentator Kai Shenkun revealed on December 25, 2025 that Dong Jun had already been removed from the post of Defense Minister, but was still being allowed to retain his general rank. Whether he will be investigated further depends on his future conduct. Ultimately, even his general rank could be stripped. Many outside commentators believe that the current Central Military Commission has no one left who understands how to lead troops in actual combat. The internal struggles and massive purges Xi Jinping has launched in the military over recent years have destroyed the entire PLA system. Former Chinese Foreign Ministry official Han Lianchao recently stated on the X platform that Zhang Youxia's fall marks Xi Jinping's complete transformation into a solitary figure. He has entered a death spiral of the more he purges, the more fearful he becomes. The more fearful he becomes, the more he purges. This growing internal centrifugal force, disloyalty, and accumulated hatred will ultimately become the final straw that breaks this totalitarian regime. The strangest spring festival travel rush of 2026, tickets sold out, yet high-speed trains running empty. China's current economic situation is highly abnormal. During the peak travel season of the Chinese New Year, many high-speed trains are carrying very few passengers. One such example is the train from Shenzhen to Wuhan on February 3rd. The question is unavoidable. Have people stopped traveling altogether or have they already returned home much earlier? After passing through Jiangxi, trains heading toward Hunan appear shockingly empty. What makes the situation even more absurd is that tickets cannot be purchased on the official 12306 platform. Yet once on board, entire carriages are nearly vacant. On February 6th, a widely shared video showed a train from Guangxue to Chongqing, running almost the entire route with multiple empty cars. One netizen bluntly remarked, tickets are sold out on the system, but there are only a handful of people in the whole carriage. Across social media, complaints have surged over the confusing and opaque practices of the 12306 ticketing system. Tickets departing from origin stations sell out within seconds, yet seats suddenly appear available when booking from later stops. Even more unreasonable is that passengers traveling only a few stations are still forced to pay for the entire route, sometimes exceeding 260 yuan, approximately 37 US dollars, while return tickets are nearly impossible to obtain. Many travelers have discovered that on third-party platforms, tickets miraculously reappear as long as extra fees are paid. The issue is not limited to high-speed rail. Some conventional trains are also nearly empty, while migrant workers cannot even secure standing tickets. On one side are people blocked by the system, on the other, trains running without passengers. Public anger has spread rapidly. A deeper question follows. Why are tickets harder to get when trains are faster and more numerous? The answer lies in the fact that people are no longer competing with other people, but with machines. Scalpers once relied on manual methods. Now they deploy software, big data, and automated ticket-grabbing systems operating 24-7. Humans cannot compete with algorithms, but the moment additional money is paid, tickets suddenly become accessible. Meanwhile, this year's Spring Festival travel rush is eerily quiet. On February 6th, a blogger in Zhejiang, Guangdong, said in a video that the station was so quiet he had to lower his voice, noting that there was no sense of the new year at all. He pointed out that Spring Festival 2026 bears no comparison to 2016. Buses have no passengers, trains have no passengers, airfares are falling, and even illegal taxis are struggling to survive. Some argue that private car ownership has increased, yet private vehicles are nowhere to be seen, prompting the question, where have all the people gone? A blogger in Kunming echoed the same observation, stating that this year's travel rush is far quieter than in previous years. The root cause is economic decline. The real estate sector has stalled, construction has slowed, factories lack orders, and migrant workers are finding it increasingly difficult to secure employment. With the cost of urban living soaring, many have been forced to return home early, some as early as November. Others have chosen not to return home at all. A migrant worker in Jiangsu made a video call to his mother and said, I didn't make any money this year, so I won't be coming home for the new year. His mother replied simply, I'm waiting for you at home. The words broke him, and he burst into tears. Every migrant worker longs to return home for the new year, but without money, they dare not go back. After a year of labor with no savings, competing for jobs, paying only a few yuan per hour, and struggling with food and rent, many feel it is better to send what little money they have home than to return empty-handed. On social media, more and more Chinese citizens say the festive atmosphere has vanished. What was once a joyful tradition has become a source of anguish and helplessness. One comment sums up the prevailing mood. Never before has a year made the Chinese people feel as hopeless as 2026. Strange phenomenon ahead of the 2026 Lunar New Year. Overnight, yellow lanterns everywhere. Beijing turns yellow. Netizens warn an ominous sign. In the days leading up to the 2026 Lunar New Year, an unsettling scene has emerged across Beijing. The lanterns lining the city's streets are no longer red, but uniformly yellow. Overnight, from major avenues to residential neighborhoods, the city has been washed in yellow. The abrupt change immediately raised questions. For generations, red lanterns have been inseparable from the Lunar New Year, symbolizing joy, good fortune, and a prosperous beginning. The sudden shift to yellow left many asking a simple but troubling question. What does a yellow lantern signify during the new year? The phenomenon is not limited to Beijing. Reports from multiple regions show that yellow lanterns have appeared simultaneously across Hebei, Shandong, Guangdong, Hubei, Fujian, and beyond. Within Beijing itself, districts such as Dongcheng, Sicheng, the central axis of the capital, and streets near the Summer Palace have all followed the same pattern. What has unsettled many residents is that in traditional Chinese culture, yellow lanterns are rarely associated with celebration. Instead, the color is commonly linked to ancestral rituals, memorial ceremonies, funerals, and religious rites. For many, the first reaction to streets filled with yellow lanterns during the new year is not festivity, but a cold and ominous atmosphere. In longstanding custom, when a family is in mourning, white or yellow lanterns are often hung at the entrance as mourning lanterns, meant to guide the spirit of the deceased. Neighbors seeing such lanterns at night would immediately know to avoid passing by. Against this cultural backdrop, introducing yellow lanterns into new year celebrations is widely perceived as a direct violation of the collective instinct to seek good fortune at the start of the year. Facing growing backlash, some local authorities offered explanations that many found unconvincing, references to the red walls and yellow tiles of the Forbidden City, or claims that in the year of the horse, fire generates earth, and yellow helps balance the five elements. Rather than easing concerns, these explanations only deepen the sense that the change was imposed, not embraced. In Zhuozhou, Hebei province, Guluo Street, decorated entirely with yellow lanterns, was quickly compared to a funeral hall. In Lanzhou, yellow lanterns on Zhongshan Bridge were removed overnight after just two days. Similar controversies had already erupted in parts of Sichuan in previous years, forcing local authorities to make revisions. At the same time, many noticed that discussion of the lantern colors was being tightly controlled. Videos were taken down, posts failed to circulate, and in some cases, users were penalized simply for questioning the change. This has reinforced the belief that the yellow lanterns were not a spontaneous design choice, but the result of coordinated directives. As criticism intensified, several localities quietly removed the yellow lanterns, replacing them once again with traditional red. In some cases, the decorations were taken down after less than two days, creating a cycle of installation and removal that drew accusations of wastefulness and administrative arrogance. From this seemingly simple change in holiday decorations, a larger question has emerged. Who decided to alter one of the most fundamental visual symbols of the Lunar New Year? And why was such a sensitive change rolled out so broadly and abruptly? Perhaps it does reflect the mood of the year itself. Everything seems to be turning yellow. In this increasingly gloomy atmosphere, many are left asking, why of all times has the red lantern, the symbol of joy and renewal, been replaced by yellow at the New Year? China's memory prices soar, driving price hikes in smartphones, computers, and automobiles. Over the past six months, global memory prices, including DRAM and NAND, have surged at an unprecedented pace, shaking the entire storage supply chain and placing heavy cost pressure on downstream industries such as smartphones, computers, and automobiles. As a result, prices of end products across mainland China are entering a new widespread round of increases that appears difficult to contain. Market analysts attribute the spike primarily to the explosive growth in demand for AI computing power, while major global memory producers have simultaneously adjusted their production structures. This has squeezed supply available for consumer and industrial markets, driving memory prices steadily higher for months. Data from TrendForce show that since September last year, DDR5 memory prices have jumped by more than 300%, while DDR4 prices have risen by over 150%. On retail component platforms, consumer-grade DDR4 and DDR5 memory prices have doubled or even tripled. For high-end server memory used in data centers, unit prices have approached 50,000 approximately 6,900 US dollars per module. In China's domestic market, the impact is already evident. The price of a 32-gigabyte memory configuration for a mainstream laptop has climbed from under 600 yuan, about 83 US dollars, to around 1,400 yuan, about 195 US dollars. This rapid increase has quickly been passed down to manufacturers of end products, severely straining cost structures that were already under pressure. According to financial media surveys, many Chinese electronics brands have been forced to raise prices. New smartphone models from Honor are priced 300 to 500 yuan higher, roughly 42 to 69 US dollars, than their previous generation counterparts. Vivo's Y500Ri series has increased by 300 to 400 yuan, about 42 to 56 US dollars, while Lenovo has implemented price hikes across its entire product lineup, with some increases reaching as high as 15%. At Huaxiangbei, China's largest electronics and components trading hub, longtime merchants say prices have far exceeded what the market can comfortably bear. A 32-gigabyte memory module that costs less than 600 yuan, about 83 US dollars, last summer now sells for over 2,000 yuan, around 278 US dollars. High-end memory using imported chips has nearly tripled in price. Solid-state drives have also surged, with a 512-gigabyte SSD rising from just over 170 yuan, about 24 US dollars, to more than 500 yuan, around 69 US dollars. Because prices have risen too sharply and too quickly, demand for custom-built computers has dropped significantly. Many shop owners report that customers are postponing purchases en masse, leaving businesses struggling and forcing some retailers to consider closing early ahead of the holiday season. The ripple effects of soaring memory prices are not limited to consumer electronics. The automotive sector, particularly smart vehicles, has also been hit hard. Advanced infotainment systems and autonomous driving technologies rely heavily on high-capacity, high-performance memory, pushing automakers into direct competition with AI server manufacturers for scarce memory supplies. Cost pressures are intensifying as a result, especially at a time when China's auto market is already locked in a brutal price war, with little room left to absorb additional shocks. United States exposes CCP's secret nuclear tests strategic pressure mounts. The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, new start between the United States and Russia, officially expired on February 5th, 2026, bringing an end to a decades-long framework of bilateral nuclear arms control. Against this backdrop, Washington is pushing for a new trilateral arms control mechanism involving Russia and the Chinese Communist Party. Analysts note that regardless of whether a new agreement is ultimately reached, the United States' move to strengthen its nuclear deterrence will place significant strategic pressure on Beijing. On February 6th, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed that arms control is no longer solely a U.S.-Russia issue. He said China must bear direct responsibility for global strategic stability, particularly as the CCP has rapidly expanded its nuclear arsenal in recent years. Since 2020, China's number of nuclear warheads has reportedly increased from just over 200 to more than 600, rendering the old U.S.-Russia-centric arms control model obsolete. Rubio warned that Russia and China should not expect the United States to sit idly by while they evade their obligations and continue expanding their nuclear forces. His remarks reflect a clear shift in Washington's strategic thinking, as the CCP is increasingly viewed as the primary source of imbalance in the global security architecture. Military analysts point out that during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union each possessed tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, forcing both sides to accept arms limitation agreements under the threat of mutual destruction. At the time, China was excluded from such mechanisms due to its relatively weak capabilities. That reality has now changed, as the CCP accelerates its nuclear buildup in an effort to narrow the gap with the United States and Russia. Observers believe the Trump administration has identified this strategic loophole. If the CCP refuses to join new arms control arrangements, Washington could lift existing constraints, rapidly expand its nuclear arsenal, and shift the focus of its deterrence from Russia toward China. The United States is still believed to have around 6,000 nuclear warheads from the Cold War era in storage, which could be upgraded to quickly restore overwhelming deterrence superiority. Significantly, on February 5th, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas G. DiNano revealed at the United Nations that China has conducted secret nuclear tests in violation of its moratorium commitments. According to DiNano, the CCP employed decoupling techniques to reduce the effectiveness of seismic monitoring, concealing nuclear detonations, including a test in June 2020 with a yield of several hundred tons. Scholars argue that under authoritarian regimes, nuclear weapons are increasingly transformed from instruments of deterrence into tools of political coercion. While the CCP has yet to achieve a fully developed triad of nuclear strike capabilities comparable to those of the United States and Russia, Washington's release from treaty constraints and its ability to rapidly expand nuclear deployments are widely seen as a powerful deterrent, placing the CCP under unprecedented strategic pressure. 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.