Strange Title in Qiushi’s First New Year Issue: Xi Also Has to Study the Plenum’s Spirit

Strange Title in Qiushi’s First New Year Issue

[People News] Although more and more signs indicate that CCP party chief Xi Jinping has lost control of the military and that his party power has been weakened, under the CCP media’s occasional intentional misdirection—such as recently still frequently letting Xi dominate the screen and adding customary expressions of loyalty in reports—many people still harbor doubts. However, speeches by senior CCP officials and the vacillation of official media themselves are quite telling. Because if the party chief truly held great power firmly in hand, the media would not alternate between downplaying and praising him.

The first issue of Qiushi magazine—the official journal of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party—published on January 1, 2026, carried an article by Xi Jinping titled “Study Well and Implement Well the Spirit of the Fourth Plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the Party.” This is part of Xi’s speech delivered at the second plenary session of the Fourth Plenum of the CCP’s 20th Central Committee on October 23, 2025. The title itself immediately appears unusual.

In the author’s recollection, titles of Xi’s speeches in recent years either directly pointed out the core content or stated that they were speeches delivered at a certain meeting, such as Xi’s “Speech at the Second Plenary Session of the Third Plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the Party” published in the September 2024 issue of Qiushi. Basically, they did not use “study and implement something” as the title. The likely reason is that, as the supreme party chief standing above everyone else, Xi’s role was to expound and demand of others, whereas “studying and implementing” was what officials below him were supposed to do.

On this basis, it can be said that the title of Xi’s article debuting in Qiushi’s first New Year issue is strange, clearly telling the outside world that the party chief’s status is no longer lofty and above all others, and that he has become like other Politburo Standing Committee members, also needing to study and implement the spirit of the plenum. This is also why official media no longer title the article as a “speech at a certain meeting,” as they did in the past.

This seems once again to corroborate that since the Fourth Plenum last year, the CCP’s top leadership has already returned to the “collective leadership” of the Hu Jintao era, which is not an illusion. One of the core contents of the Fourth Plenum communiqué is that during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period it is necessary to “uphold and strengthen the authority of the Party Central Committee and centralized, unified leadership.”

Based on reports published by Xinhua Net and the content of Xi’s speech, one can also glimpse that Xi himself has to heed the “Party Central Committee,” and that this “Party Central Committee” is no longer a “Central Committee” dominated by Xi alone.

When first discussing how to grasp the spirit of the plenum, Xi said it was necessary to “deeply understand the Party Central Committee’s basic judgment on the domestic and international situation,” that “the entire Party must unify its thinking and actions with this basic judgment and major decision-making deployments of the Party Central Committee,” that “the ‘Recommendations’ place special emphasis on upholding and strengthening the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee,” and that it is necessary to “continuously use the Party’s innovative theory to unify thinking, unify will, and unify action, and to carry the Party’s leadership through all aspects and the entire process of economic and social development.”

When talking about how to comprehensively and strictly govern the Party, Xi’s wording also included “it is necessary to comprehensively implement the Party Central Committee’s important thinking on Party building and its important thinking on the Party’s self-revolution,” and so on.

In fact, since rumors of trouble involving Xi surfaced in July last year, whether proactively or passively, he has already mentioned “the Party Central Committee’s collective leadership” on multiple occasions. For example, on November 6 last year, official media reported that when Xi listened to a work report on the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port in Sanya, Hainan Province, he mentioned “the Party Central Committee” twice in the first paragraph. Specifically, Xi emphasized that “building the Hainan Free Trade Port is a major decision made by the Party Central Committee,” and that it is necessary to “under the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, … fully realize the goals of building the Hainan Free Trade Port.”

Subsequently, when listening to reports from senior Guangdong officials in Guangzhou, Xi said that in studying and implementing the spirit of the plenum, it is necessary to “effectively unify thinking and action with the Party Central Committee’s decision-making deployments.” And before the Fourth Plenum, Xi had also expressed “strengthening the Party Central Committee’s centralized and unified leadership” on multiple occasions. Such wording and frequency were unimaginable before the Third Plenum in 2024. If there is now “centralized and unified leadership of the Central Committee,” then how much power does Xi still have?

Moreover, on December 22 last year, both the CCP’s official website and the military website prominently published on their homepages an article titled “Improving the Mechanism for Implementing Major Decision-Making Deployments of the Party Central Committee,” written by Meng Xiangfeng, deputy director of the General Office of the CCP Central Committee in charge of day-to-day work. This can further serve as an annotation for why Xi has to study and implement the spirit of the plenum.

Meng Xiangfeng’s article begins by mentioning the “Recommendations” adopted by the Fourth Plenum of the 20th Central Committee, emphasizing the need to “improve the mechanism for implementing major decision-making deployments of the Party Central Committee to ensure top-to-bottom alignment and strong execution,” and then elaborates on this in three subsections.

The first subsection discusses the importance of implementing these deployments, stating that “major decision-making deployments of the Party Central Committee are the basis for the entire Party, the entire military, and the people of all ethnic groups nationwide to unify thinking, unify will, and unify action,” and that “major decision-making deployments of the Party Central Committee manifest the authority of the Party Central Committee and centralized, unified leadership.” This section also cites some of Xi’s words, such as: “If the Party Central Committee’s decision-making deployments are not effectively implemented, how can we talk about the Party’s centralized and unified leadership?” Is this implying that without exception, all Politburo Standing Committee members must obey the “Party Central Committee”?

What particularly deserves attention is that this section also includes the wording “resolutely implement the Party Central Committee’s major decision-making deployments and Xi Jinping’s important instructions and directives, consciously benchmark and align with the spirit of the Party Central Committee, and maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee in thinking, politics, and action.” Does this point out that the “Party Central Committee” stands above Xi?

The second subsection discusses what mechanisms have been adopted to ensure that the “Party Central Committee’s” orders can be implemented. It mentions the “Regulations on the Work of the Party Central Committee’s Decision-Making, Deliberation, and Coordination Bodies,” which were adopted at a CCP Politburo meeting on June 30 last year. The purpose of establishing these bodies is “to improve the important institutional arrangements for the Party Central Committee’s centralized and unified leadership over major work and to promote the implementation of major tasks.”

The establishment of such a body outside the Politburo is highly unusual and has been widely suspected by outsiders to legitimize the control of the political situation by CCP elders, thereby realizing true “centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee.”

In the third subsection, which discusses what officials at all levels should do to ensure the implementation of the “Party Central Committee’s major decision-making deployments,” only one point mentions Xi’s instructions; the rest all concern improving or implementing various mechanisms of the “Party Central Committee.” Between Xi and the “Party Central Committee,” which is greater?

From the fact that the party chief has to study and implement the spirit of the Fourth Plenum, and from his repeated references to the “Party Central Committee” and “collective leadership,” can one infer the conclusion that his party power has been weakened?△