Politico claims that Xi Jinping killed top officials after a Russian official warned him
of nuclear state secret leaks. That sounds like something Xi would do, but is it true?
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
This year has seen a lot of high-level officials in China disappear.
Officials like former Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang,
former Defense Minister Li Shangfu, and a number of top PLA Rocket Force leaders.
We’ve also seen the death of former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang,
under questionable circumstances.
The disappearances and deaths have made headlines in both Chinese and Western media.
And raised a lot of speculation.
But there’s one piece of speculation,
in particular, that has the sinosphere going “whaaaat?”.
Last week, Politico put out a piece titled “China’s Xi goes full Stalin with purge”.
It has spread like wildfire, and it contains some pretty bold claims.
One of them is that Deputy Russian Foreign Minister
Andrey Rudenko played a major role in Xi’s purges.
The article references Rudenko's meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang
back in June of this year, just days before Qin disappeared from the public.
It claims that Rudenko’s meeting was actually an excuse to inform Xi himself of something dire.
Politico says, “according to people with access to top Chinese officials,
Russian Deputy Minister Rudenko’s message to Xi included allegations that Qin and relatives of
top rocket force officers had helped pass Chinese nuclear secrets to Western intelligence agencies.”
Politico then implies that Xi acted on those alleged claims against Qin Gang
and top rocket force officers, hence Qin’s disappearance a few days later.
It goes on to say, “Two of these people [with access to top Chinese
officials] claim that Qin died, either from suicide or torture,
in late July in the military hospital in Beijing that treats China’s top leaders.”
Either from suicide or torture? Yeah, it's always hard to tell those causes of death apart.
The way the article presents it, Xi is not just purging his own allies
due to paranoia. He’s also killing them at will.
Xi certainly is a ruthless authoritarian leader, so it would be very easy to take all these claims
at face value, but my China-sense is tingling. Something is very off with this article.
For one, Politico doesn’t list any specific author.
Some people speculate that the writer is Jamil Anderlini , editor-in-chief
of Politico Europe and a former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times.
But if that’s true, then he did a pretty sloppy job. The writing is pretty shoddy in some places,
with whiplash-inducing changes of topic. Given the era we live in,
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was written by AI.
And there are a *lot* of factual errors.
For one, the Politico article reports that “[Xi]
ascended to chairmanship of the Communist Party in 2012”.
Wrong. Xi is *not* chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.
That would be like referring to Joe Bidenas Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau as President,
or the cast from any of those Real Housewives shows as talented.
Xi is actually the CCP’s General Secretary.
People do call him Chairman Xi, but it's not related to his party job. It
comes from his government job, Chairman or President of the People's Republic
of China. (source
https://twitter.com/wentisung/status/1732714077154316637)
Politico gets a lot of other things wrong, as well.
It describes Li Keqiang as Xi’s “former rival” and implies that Xi had Li assassinated.
But as I’ve mentioned in previous episodes,
Li was never a true threat to Xi. He never had the clout to challenge Xi in any way,
so it’s highly unlikely that he ever was a rival or a target on Xi’s hitlist.
Another mistake that Politico made was describing Qin Gang as a former
small-town official in the Standing Committee of the Chinese Politburo.
The thing is, Qin has never been in the Standing Committee of the Politburo,
or even in the Politburo, period.
Also, he was born in Tianjin, one of China’s direct-administered municipalities, which has
a population of over 15 million people, and went to university in Beijing to be a career diplomat.
It’s hard to see how he’s a “small-town official” with that kind of bio.
The article also doesn’t cite any experts regarding the claims made,
which is a pretty standard journalistic practice. In fact,
the article reads a lot less like news and a lot more like gossip storytelling.
According to SinoInsider, a risk consultancy that specializes in elite Chinese politics
“the article reads more like a more polished account of rumors of CCP elite politics that
circulate in Chinese-speaking circles, filled with “story-telling” elements, sweeping speculations,
misrepresentations of dynamics in CCP elite politics, and a clear “anti-Xi” bias.”
In other words, all the problems are exclusively Xi’s fault,
not his predecessors or the fundamental failings of the Communist system.
So with all that in mind, what should we make of the claims that Russia warned Xi
about top Chinese leaders leaking nuclear secrets?
I’ll get to that after the break.
Welcome back.
Politico claims that Russia’s deputy foreign minister met with Xi last June
to warn him that Qin Gang and relatives of some top PLA Rocket Force officials
helped pass nuclear secrets to Western intelligence agencies. Politico also
claims that Qin died from suicide or torture because of Russia’s warning.
Is that really the case?
Well, the thing is, there are a lot of holes in this story.
SinoInsider , notes that “Qin is highly unlikely to have passed on nuclear secrets to Western
intelligence agencies because he would not be able to obtain them in his capacity as foreign
minister and is very unlikely to have ample opportunities in the foreign service to cross
paths with senior PLA officials who would be privy to such classified information.”
But let’s assume, for a moment, that Qin and PLA Rocket Force officials *were* giving Western
intelligence agencies nuclear secrets. How would Russia know about it? More importantly,
how would Russia know about it before Xi did? The answer is, they wouldn’t.
Xi isn’t stupid. Evil, dishonest, repugnant, brazen, insecure, ugly,
and probably smells weird. But not stupid.
Ming Pao , a pro-CCP Hong Kong newspaper, reported in this article published in May
of this year that top PLA Rocket Force leaders had been taken away for investigation a month prior.
Xi would have known *then* that something was up, yet Politico makes it look as though
Xi just learned about their treachery after meeting with Russia’s deputy foreign minister.
Also, if Politico’s take on events were true,
does it really make sense for Xi to rush to sack his foreign minister just days after
getting a tip? I’d imagine that Xi would have to spend a bit more time verifying everything.
After all, Xi isn’t exactly the most trusting of individuals. He may be evil, dishonest,
repugnant, brazen, insecure, ugly, and probably smells weird… but he’s not that gullible.
The idea that Xi would have Qin killed off in a military
hospital so quickly also makes me suspicious.
The CCP loves killing off racial minorities and religious groups,
but its priority when it comes to officials under investigation is to first extract information and
confessions. It actually makes sure that people *don’t* commit suicide before the CCP is ready.
So Qin dying by suicide in a military hospital in July this year doesn’t really add up.
Neither does him dying by torture, since, according to Sinoinsider,
“officials are more likely to suffer relatively “non-violent” abuses,
such as sleep deprivation, rather than harrowing medieval torture methods.”
There’s also the question of what Russia would gain from informing Xi about the alleged leaks.
Even as Xi’s “friend,” Putin is smart enough to know that there are better
things to do with information than just give it away, so unless Russia made some kind of
deal with Xi that we haven’t heard about, Politico’s story still just doesn’t add up.
But there is another possibility. The way Sinoinsider sees it,
Politico’s article reads like something anti-Xi forces within China would share.
As I’ve covered in previous episodes, the faction belonging to Xi’s now-dead predecessor,
Jiang Zemin, frequently uses Western media outlets as a way to make Xi look bad.
For example, this article from last month cited people connected to the CCP for a
story claiming that Xi asked US President Joe Biden for a $900 billion bailout.
Which is obviously ridiculous.
Politico’s article could be like that.
Its reliance on “people with access to top Chinese officials” without saying who they
are is a dead giveaway. Chances are, those connections are part of the Jiang faction.
It’s also noteworthy how Politico makes Xi look as bad as possible by using a
sensational headline comparing Xi to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
Minus the glorious mustache.
Xi couldn’t pull it off.
Xi absolutely has purged his political rivals. But it’s a far cry from the mass
execution of 700,000 people during Stalin’s Great Terror campaign.
Politico paints Xi as someone who’s “isolated and paranoid” and dives into speculation saying that
Xi could miscalculate and provoke armed conflict in order to distract from his domestic troubles.
This is despite the fact that, as I’ve said before,
Xi is in no position to use war as a distraction from domestic troubles.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s entirely possible that there *are* high level Chinese
leaders that could be compromised by Western intelligence agencies,
and it’s just as possible that China’s probing them to ensure that state secrets stay secret.
Tons of rumors about these kinds of things have been circulating in China for quite a while.
For example, the Epoch Times, citing an unnamed source close to a high-ranking CCP official,
claimed back in July that there was a sale of military secrets behind Qin’s disappearance.
The outlet alleged that the son of a high-ranking Rocket Force officer
leaked sensitive information to the US, and when Qin was informed about it,
he didn’t immediately report the incident to Xi, and that was what got him in trouble.
Other rumors claim that Qin Gang was gagged because of
a mistress who may have been a double agent.
So where is Qin and why hasn’t anyone seen him? Well,
keep in mind that officials who vanish while under investigation typically
stay vanished for half a year to a full year with zero information available.
It’s hard to say what’s true, especially when the main source is “people with access to top
CCP officials”. But Politico’s version of events just doesn’t make sense, and if news outlets
like Politico want people to trust them, they better make sure they get their facts straight.
Now, I’ve got a video I want to show you that I think will tickle your fancy, but first,
it’s time to show love to the people who make this show possible, the China Uncensored 50 Cent Army—
Fans who support the show on patreon.com/chinauncensored.
As my way of thanks, I answer their questions at the end of these episodes.
Today’s question comes from James Wallberg “Chris,
when the CCP falls do you think the Chinese people will give back the lands it took from
the Mongolians, Tibetans, and I’m going to assume you meant Uyghurs?
That’s a really intriguing question. Now one issue is that even after the CCP collapses,
generations of Party brainwashing will still be in effect. The CCP has trained people in China
to believe these places were always a part of China’s sacred territory. Yup, always.
Especially Xinjiang which means New Territories.
Basically even after the CCP falls, a lot of problems will be left behind by it. And what
land belongs to whom won’t be an easy one to sort out. There’s a reason why
the CCP has encouraged Han Chinese to move to Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. So
there’s no easy way to extract those territories from Chinese control.
Thanks for your question and your support James.
And here’s that video I want to show you. It's the latest episode of my new show Deep
Thoughts While Gaming, about the game Big Ambitions, and why you can’t get ahead in
life. Let me know what you think! And if you want to support China Uncensored on Patreon,
click that orange button. We’ll sink if not for supporters like you.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. See you next time.