Several big shots jointly applying extreme pressure — smoke signals rising from China’s First Family

Zhang Youxia counterstrikes against Xi Jinping (People News illustration)

[People News] Lately in Beijing, the military is undergoing a massive purge, the political arena is experiencing a “total blackout,” and several key figures have suddenly evaporated from the news overnight. Ma Xingrui, the powerful viceroy who came out of Xinjiang — missing. Li Xi, the No. 1 hatchet man of the Central Discipline Inspection Commission — nowhere to be seen.Cai Qi, the chief butler of the inner court — completely silent.  

Many people think this is Xi showing his power. Not at all. The ones actually wielding the knives are the group that has been staring at him and holding it in for a very long time. It’s just that the “anti-corruption” script is still being read by Old Xi himself.  

Behind this are two forces inside the Party:  

1. The “money faction” — Three years of Zero-COVID, unfinished property projects, local government debt — all of this has choked the cash flow of the princeling conglomerates until they’re almost starving. They’re desperate.  

2. The “route faction” — The technocrats have figured it out: extreme centralization of power plus “liberate Taiwan by force” is a dead-end road. If they keep following the Bun (Xi’s nickname), everyone will be buried with him. They’re afraid of dying, so they want to change course.  

Right now these two factions have exactly the same target: pin Old Xi to the table and force him, before the 21st Party Congress in 2027, to give a clear account — spit out the money he swallowed, release the power he’s clutching, and turn the steering wheel away from this leftward death road.  

This is the original shareholders of the red families besieging a CEO who no longer plays by the rules. All the big shots are sharpening their knives: first scare the First Family until they’re shaking in their boots, then sit down to “negotiate terms.”  

The bargaining chips in the CCP political casino: Ma Xingrui, Bi Jingquan, Cai Qi  

Let’s look at these three names: Ma Xingrui, Bi Jingquan, Cai Qi.  
One controls money, one holds the old ledgers, one guards security around the Bun. When all three have “accidents” at the same time, there is only one purpose — make the First Family completely lose their sense of security.  

First, Ma Xingrui — Politburo member, former Xinjiang party secretary. Over in Australia, Jiang Wangzheng (an exile) revealed that US$450 million in cash was found in Ma’s Hong Kong mansion. That’s not a small number. But even bigger than the money is what it represents — Ma Xingrui is connected to Peng Liyuan through old hometown and god-parent ties.  

Yet look at the official statements now: everything is “corruption,” “breach of discipline,” “destroying the political ecology” — not a single word dares touch the First Family. Can’t the Discipline Commission find anything? Of course they can. There’s only one real reason: the people moving against him right now do not want to push Old Xi into a corner — after all, he is still nominally the man with his finger on the nuclear button.  

US$450 million is just the visible “window amount”; the real funds are hidden in offshore accounts. But this figure is already enough to knock on the door.  

Next, Bi Jingquan Many people outside the system have never heard of him, but inside he is extremely important. He was Wang Qishan’s chief secretary and a key figure of the Chen Yun faction. What he holds in his hand is the stack of old accounts that everyone is most afraid will be reopened — all those secret deals from the past that can’t be mentioned in public. How exactly was Xi pushed to the top? How did the big families divide the money and the turf? Who contributed people? Who contributed money? No one knows better than him.  

Pulling out such a figure and expelling him from the Party (“double opening”) is actually delivering two layers of extremely harsh warnings:  

Layer 1: Don’t think that because you fought alongside the Bun, carried his sedan chair, and stood on his team in the past, you’re safe. From today onward, none of that “revolutionary friendship” counts anymore.  

Layer 2: Peng Liyuan and the Bun — we all know about your old skeletons in the closet. We just didn’t want to talk about them before. If you still dare to make trouble, we dare to open the ledger in front of the whole Party and read it page by page out loud.  

Finally, Cai Qi — the absolute core of the core. He is Xi’s shadow, the gatekeeper of the First Family, and the direct boss of the Central Guard Bureau (the Praetorian Guard). In the whole of China there are no more than two or three people who can touch him.  

Yet a few days ago a detail circulated in elite circles: Cai Qi was “invited” to a military compound and talked to for an entire afternoon.  

The version going around says the topic that day was extremely sensitive: In certain ultra-sensitive cases, how exactly did the armed police, special police, and local police coordinate? Did anyone use “instructions from the Chief” as a banner to suppress material unfavorable to certain top leaders? Was it sent out through special channels from the General Office?  

They are tracing every single action that “wiped the Chief’s ass” upward, link by link. The goal is not to kill Cai Qi, but to make the First Family understand one thing — the gun barrel has already begun to aim at Zhongnanhai.  

This really scared Old Xi. That one afternoon of “conversation” drained away the very last shred of absolute security the Bun had left.  

The current tactic is crystal clear — extreme pressure on three fronts:  
- One knife at the money bag (Ma Xingrui)  
- One knife flipping the old ledger (Bi Jingquan)  
- One knife at the gatekeeper (Cai Qi)  

The three knives together are a coordinated effort to terrify the First Family, with the goal that before the 2027 leadership transition, Xi will look around and see no one beside him, feel unprecedented fear and loneliness, and then someone will say to him:  

“Boss, look at the situation you’re in now. Sitting there really has no meaning anymore. Why not step down?”  

This is CCP politics! Ma Xingrui, Bi Jingquan, Cai Qi — they’re nothing more than chips that can be thrown away at any moment in this gambling game.  

Zhang Youxia steps forward with a drawn sword, representing the shareholders to settle accounts with the CEO  

Back in the day, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and the old men, plus the circle of red second-generation around Zhang Youxia — they played a joint-stock system: you’re from the Deng family, you’re from the Ye family, everyone is a shareholder. They picked the Bun to come up because he looked honest and easy to control; they wanted him to be CEO, watch the house, take the blame together when needed, make money together, and everyone would take turns at the table.  

What happened? The moment the Bun sat down, he changed his face. He did three things that completely wrecked this joint-stock enterprise:  

1. Eating alone — turning shareholders’ money into his own private property.  
   In the old rules, red princelings had immunity medals; everyone got rich together; if someone got in trouble you just slapped their wrist, you didn’t touch the root. Now the rule is the Bun takes the whole pot. Wu Xiaohui of Anbang is Deng’s grandson-in-law; Chen Feng of HNA is Wang Qishan’s white glove — these were the money bags of various shareholder families. The Bun arrested whoever he wanted; trillions in assets were disposed of at will. How could the red shareholders not panic?  

2. Changing the family law — from joint-stock to 100 % family ownership.  
   The old family law was clear: the throne is rotated; when your turn is up you step down, no matter which family’s young master you are. The Bun changed the rule the moment he took power: from now on this isn’t a joint-stock company anymore, it’s wholly owned by me. When I retire, I’ll still pass it to the people I trust most — my own clique. That directly turns everyone else’s shares into his private property. The other red second-generation went to bed as partners and woke up as senior employees; keep going and they’re just pigs waiting to be slaughtered whenever he feels like it. How do you think they feel?  

3. Smashing the venue — destroying the shareholders’ escape routes as well.  
   All these shareholders’ kids are in America and Europe, their money is in Switzerland and the Caymans — that was their safe exit. If one day things flip in China, with kids and money overseas they can at least live the rest of their lives as exiled tycoons. But the Bun confronts the U.S. every day, runs wolf-warrior diplomacy, and smashes the entire international playing field to pieces. The shareholders are frantic: Big brother, we want to get rich, not die with you! You’re seizing our money, rewriting the rules, and even our overseas escape routes are in tatters. How can we not turn against you?  

So the situation now is perfectly clear. Zhang Youxia stepping out with a drawn sword this time is not to overthrow the Communist Party; he is representing all these original shareholders whose wealth has been cut off and whose shares have been confiscated, coming to settle accounts with the “rule-breaking CEO”: Spit out the money you swallowed, hand over the power you stole.  

Can Old Xi surrender on the spot? Of course not — that would cost him his life. Right now he’s a toothless tiger who can’t bite, but he can still put on an act and roar a couple of times.  

A short while ago the Bun suddenly, with great fanfare, commemorated the 110th anniversary of Hu Yaobang’s birth. How ridiculous is that? For the past ten-plus years he’s been doing Cultural Revolution–style politics, walking Mao Zedong’s road. Now that the fire is licking his eyebrows, he suddenly commemorates the founding ancestor of the reform faction. This is “the pig butcher chanting sutras to pretend he’s merciful.”  

Old Xi knows perfectly well that besides these ruthless red princelings, there is another force in the Party — the “reform for survival” faction of technocrats in the Wen Jiabao mold. They have no guns, but they have popular support and administrative ability. Right now Old Xi is doing united-front work:  

“Look, actually I respect Hu Yaobang too; I also want reform.  
Don’t get too close with those roughnecks around Zhang Youxia — all they know how to do is play with guns.  
As long as you let me sit steady, I can change too.”  

He wants to drive a wedge between the red princelings and the bureaucrats, create division, so he can survive a few more years in the crack.  

But a wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf. No one believes him anymore.  

Therefore, it’s not hard to predict the next steps in this life-and-death struggle inside the CCP: Old Xi will never meekly surrender, and the elders, in order to preserve the Party, dare not push the Bun all the way into a corner either. This will only cause the internal fighting to keep escalating in ever-new patterns. The harder they fight, the faster the regime will collapse.  

Let us just sit back and watch this out-of-control wreck of a vehicle — as they fight over the steering wheel, it will drive itself off the cliff.  

(Compiled from Jiang Feng Vision) △