In July 2025, Chinese President Xi Jinping was conspicuously absent from the BRICS summit for the first time in over a decade. At around the same time, senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders gathered in Beijing to commemorate the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Xi didn’t join them. Instead, he quietly laid flowers at a separate memorial, alone. The contrast was striking: Xi seemed sidelined from the very same pageantry that elevated him to the core of the CCP.

This is not an isolated event. Recently, a series of unusual developments have raised questions among China watchers: Is Xi Jinping still firmly in control of the CCP, or is an internal contest for power breaking out into the open?

While it is impossible to know for certain – the CCP’s internal politics remain notoriously opaque – several notable indicators point to internal shifts within the party.

Indicators of Power Rebalancing

The most telling signs of a power shift have come from an unprecedented sequence of purges in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Since 2023, the PLA has undergone three major “anti-corruption” purges that sequentially dismantled Xi Jinping’s two main sources of authority within the PLA: the Shaanxi Gang and the Fujian Clique. These factions are informal groups that have emerged during Xi’s time in each province, comprising officers and civilians connected by shared backgrounds and CCP patronage.

The first wave of purges, beginning in 2023, targeted the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF), the Central Military Commission’s (CMC) Equipment Development Department, and the Chinese military-industrial complex. Many officers purged in this wave were associated with the Shaanxi Gang, generals with connections to Xi through his home province and shared links to other “princelings.” Most prominent in this group is Zhang Youxia, the current CMC vice chair, who shares both provincial ties and family connections with the Xi clan dating back to t