Around 1969 or 1970, as a young girl of about ten, I watched old ‘Uncle’ Liu, a kindly neighbour, being dragged onto the street in Beijing, his head forced down by teenage Red Guards wielding leather belts and revolutionary slogans. His crime? Being a schoolteacher with an uncle who once owned land. It was my first glimpse of how fragile even the most seemingly unassailable regime can become when paranoia and power collide. (Sound familiar?)
Decades later, I find myself watching China again teeter towards that same dangerous intersection. The stage is different: not the streets outside apartment blocks and crowds waving little red books, but polished Politburo meetings, military reshuffles, and whispers in the marble halls of Zhongnanhai. The protagonist is different, too: Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. And yet, beneath the carefully choreographed optics of strength and stability, unmistakable cracks are beginning to show.
To understand Xi Jinping's current predicament, one must first appreciate the extent of his consolidation of power. Since taking the helm in 2012, Xi has waged a relentless campaign to centralise authority. He has abolished term limits, purged rivals under the guise of anti-corruption drives, and embedded his own political ‘theory’, “Xi Jinping Thought”, into the Party constitution. His ambition is not mere governance, it is nothing short of re-engineering the Communist Party, and, by extension, the Chinese nation, in his image.
For years, it seemed to work. The West was transfixed by Xi's swagger on the world stage: his Belt and Road Initiative redrawing global trade routes, his wolf warrior diplomats snarling at foreign critics, and his tight grip over Hong Kong crushing dreams of autonomy. But in China, as I remember from my youth, the surface can be deceptive. Beneath the slogans and staged spectacles, history has a habit of fermenting dissent, often invisible, often underestimated, until the moment it boils over.
Recent months have produced a flurry of speculation suggesting Xi's hold on power may not be as ironclad as his propagandists claim. His unexplained absences from public view, some as brief as a few days, others rumoured to last weeks, have ignited whispers of ill health or political discord. His wife, Peng Liyuan, once an omnipresent symbol of China's soft power, has been conspicuously absent from diplomatic engagements.
More troubling still are the tremors emanating from China's military establishment. Several top generals with close ties to Xi have been quietly removed, disappeared, or reportedly placed under investigation. The abrupt dismissal of Defence Minister Li Shangfu last year raised eyebrows internationally; the recent sidelining of other senior figures within the Rocket Force and People's Liberation Army suggests a deeper malaise. If there's one lesson the Cultural Revolution etched into my memory, it's that purges, especially those dressed up as "discipline rectification", are seldom signs of strength. They are symptoms of fear at the top.
Despite outward appearances of unity, the Communist Party remains a complex web of rival factions, vested interests, and ideological divides. Xi's campaign to neuter these factions, particularly the Communist Youth League clique associated with his predecessors Hu Jintao and Li Keqiang, has largely succeeded in the short term. But in doing so, he has also left a dangerous vacuum.
There is no heir apparent. No credible succession plan. No institutionalised mechanism to transition power peacefully. Instead, Xi has surrounded himself with loyalists, men chosen for their devotion rather than their competence or broad-based support. The Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of Chinese decision-making, is increasingly stacked with individuals whose futures rise and fall entirely on Xi's favour. This, too, is eerily familiar. I recall how Mao's refusal to name a successor fuelled deadly factional struggles throughout the 1970s, culminating in the Gang of Four's brief seizure of power after his death. The absence of orderly succession is not a sign of control, it is a time bomb.
If Xi's authority is to face its sternest test, however, it is more likely to come not from political elites alone, but from the discontent simmering among the Chinese people. The economic miracle that once underpinned Party legitimacy is faltering. Youth unemployment, officially reported at nearly 20% before statistics were abruptly halted, is believed to be far higher. The once-mighty property sector is mired in crisis, with giants like Evergrande and Country Garden teetering on the brink of collapse.
Meanwhile, Xi's aggressive industrial policies, from semiconductors to electric vehicles, have yielded mixed results. Despite vast state subsidies, China remains dependent on foreign technology in critical areas, and Western sanctions have begun to bite. For ordinary Chinese, the mood is darkening. The euphoric nationalism of a rising superpower has given way to quiet frustration, and in some cases, outright defiance. The White Paper protests of 2022, where thousands demonstrated against draconian zero-COVID lockdowns, revealed how brittle the facade of control can be when economic hardship and state overreach collide.
The most chilling parallel to Mao's era, however, is the creeping resurrection of the cult of personality. In cities across China, billboards extolling Xi's wisdom loom over thoroughfares. State media speaks of him in reverential tones, not as a leader among equals, but as a visionary above reproach. Some commentators have even speculated that Xi harbours ambitions to be enshrined as "People's Leader", a title not seen since Mao himself.
For those of us old enough to remember, this is no harmless vanity project. The deification of a leader erodes institutional checks, fosters paranoia, and incentivises sycophancy. It turns policymaking into an echo chamber, where bad news is buried, dissent is criminalised, and reality is filtered through ideological orthodoxy. (Sound familiar?)
The danger is not merely theoretical. Xi's zero-COVID policy, rigidly enforced long after the rest of the world reopened, was driven less by science than by political inflexibility. Only after rare, nationwide protests did the policy abruptly unravel, leaving hospitals overwhelmed and the Party scrambling to save face.
Western observers often underestimate how opaque, and therefore unstable, Chinese elite politics can be. In recent months, unverified reports have emerged of heated internal debates within the Politburo, particularly regarding economic policy, relations with the United States, and the Taiwan question.
Xi's push for "common prosperity" and tech self-reliance has reportedly met resistance from Party elders and business elites alarmed by regulatory overreach and capital flight. The death of former Premier Li Keqiang last year, officially from a heart attack, was shrouded in secrecy, prompting conspiracy theories of foul play and further souring elite sentiment.
While such rumours remain unproven, they are telling in themselves. In an environment as tightly controlled as China, persistent speculation reflects genuine uncertainty, and possibly fear, among those closest to power. The question whispered from Shanghai boardrooms to foreign ministries worldwide is deceptively simple: could Xi Jinping be forced from office? The answer, for now, remains probably not, but with caveats.
Xi's control over the security apparatus, propaganda machine, and military gives him formidable tools to crush dissent, both within the Party and on the streets. His systematic purges have cowed potential rivals, and his surveillance state, fuelled by artificial intelligence and ubiquitous cameras, leaves little room for organised opposition.
Yet history, including China's own, warns us that authoritarian regimes often appear strongest just before they weaken. In 1976, as Mao's health faded, few predicted the rapid fall of the Gang of Four or the restoration of pragmatists like Deng Xiaoping. In 1989, even as students filled Tiananmen Square, many believed the Party's internal unity would hold only to discover deep fractures in the leadership. Xi may have fortified his palace, but the foundations of his rule, economic performance, elite loyalty, and public acquiescence, are all showing strain.
For me, the most unsettling aspect of China's current trajectory is its profound historical amnesia. The Cultural Revolution scarred a generation, including my own, with trauma, lost opportunities, and the realisation that unchecked power is a threat to all, regardless of loyalty or rank. Deng Xiaoping, for all his flaws, understood this. His emphasis on collective leadership, term limits, and institutional governance was designed to prevent a return to the chaos of Maoist rule. Xi Jinping, himself a princeling who suffered during the Cultural Revolution, appears to have forgotten that lesson, or chosen to disregard it in favour of personal ambition.
China today is not 1960s China. Its economy is vastly more complex, its society more educated, its place in the world far greater. But power, absolute, concentrated, unaccountable power, remains as corrosive as ever. The West would be wise not to mistake China's internal troubles for weakness, nor should it assume Xi's departure, if it comes, will usher in liberal reform. Authoritarian regimes often evolve into something worse before they collapse entirely. But the notion that Xi Jinping's rule is unassailable is equally misguided. The cracks are visible, in the military, the economy, the Party, and on the streets. Whether they widen into a genuine political crisis depends on forces hidden from public view, whispered in dialect behind closed doors, or written in code into the latest, sanitised Party communique.
From my vantage point as a Chinese woman who has seen the cyclical nature of fear and power, I believe Xi's greatest vulnerability is not a rival's coup or a foreign embargo. It is hubris, the belief that the machinery of repression and control can indefinitely silence the demands of a restless, ambitious, and increasingly uncertain nation.
The emperor may still sit on his throne, but the marble beneath is beginning to shift.