SinoInsight 1
The incident, popularly known as the “Xuzhou chained woman” (徐州鐵鏈女) or the “Fengxian eight-child mother” (豐縣八孩母親), saw Chinese citizens seek the truth about what happened to her and expose the Feng County (縣, prounounced “xian,” means “county” in Chinese) local government’s effort to cover up what appears to be a human trafficking and abuse case.
The incident, which hugely incensed the Chinese public, also drew attention to the issue of widespread collusion between officials and criminal elements in undertaking human trafficking, corpse trafficking, rape, sexual slavery, murder, and other dark activities.
The video
On Jan. 28, 2022, a Sina Weibo blog posted videos featuring Feng County villager Dong Zhimin. Dong, a local government-promoted “role model,” is seen dressing and feeding his eight children in one of the videos. Another video showed Dong’s “wife” in a dilapidated room next to the house. Dong’s “wife” had a chain around her neck and was dressed lightly and without shoes despite the 32 degrees Fahrenheit weather. Her hair was disheveled and cheeks dirtied, while steamed buns were strewn on the dirt floor. The blogger who spoke to her did not mention the chain or identify her by name.
The video of the chained woman was rapidly and broadly circulated, with many demanding protection of the rights and interests of disadvantaged women and girls in China. Some netizens who carefully listened to the chained woman found that her Mandarin was sprinkled with Sichuan and Xuzhou dialects. In viewing older videos by mainland self-media and Dong Zhimin, they noted that she said disturbing things like “This world doesn’t want me anymore,” “This house is full of rapists,” and “I’m like a prostitute.”
According to information circulating on social media, young cadres from the propaganda department of Huankou Township in Feng County had been promoting Dong and his family (a mother in her 80s, a disabled brother, an adult son working to subsidize family expenses, and seven other children between the ages of three to 10) as an example of prolific, poor, but happy villagers that would benefit from donations. They previously made and shared several videos of the Dong family, resulting in Dong Zhimin becoming a minor internet celebrity and receiving a fair amount of donations. The local government’s promotion of the Dong family also attracted the attention of so-called “positive energy” self-media, leading to the video of the “Xuzhou chained woman.”
Government response
The public outcry over the chained woman pressured the local government of Feng County into releasing a statement about the incident. Efforts by Chinese netizens to expose discrepancies in the initial statement saw the Feng County authorities issue several more statements, each time changing the narrative and facing more challenges from the public:
1. Jan. 28: The Feng propaganda department claimed that the “Xuzhou chained woman” is married, a local, and not trafficked. They added that she was chained due to mental illness.
2. Jan. 30: The Feng authorities issued a second statement identifying the woman as “Yang So-and-so Xia” (later reported as “Yang Qingxia” by media outlets) and claimed that she had been chained since June 2021 because she would otherwise hit people. The statement also claimed that a DNA search of “Yang” found that she had not been abducted or trafficked. Rather, “Yang” was “picked up” by the roadside by Dong Zhimin’s father in June 1998. The statement further said that Dong Zhimin is suspected of breaking the law by chaining his “wife” and an investigation is underway.
3. Feb. 7: A joint investigation team by the Xuzhou municipal Party Committee and government issued a statement claiming that “Yang So-and-so Xia” is actually “Xiaohuamei” from Yagu Village in Yunnan Province. “Yang” had been traveling with a woman surnamed Sang from her village to Jiangsu to receive “medical treatment and find a good family to marry” when Sang somehow lost her in Jiangsu’s Donghai County. Sang did not call the police or inform “Yang’s” family of losing her. The statement also said that a DNA test showed that Dong Zhimin’s eight children are with “Xiaohuamei.”
4. Feb. 10: The Xuzhou authorities released another statement noting that DNA tests have identified the kin of “Yang Qingxia” and that Dong Zhimin had been detained on suspicion of illegally detaining “Yang.” The statement also noted that Sang and her husband have been detained on suspicion of abduction and trafficking women.
5. On Feb. 17, the Jiangsu provincial Party Committee and government announced the establishment of an investigation team to comprehensively probe the “Fengxian eight-child mother” incident.
6. Feb. 23: The Jiangsu investigation team issued a report on the “Xuzhou chained woman” incident that sought to clarify information about her background. Key points in the report include:
- The investigation team claimed that the chained woman is “Xiaohuamei” from Yunnan, and not the missing woman Li Ying from Sichuan that people are claiming (see the “Societal reactions” segment below).
- The Ministry of Public Security’s Physical Evidence Identification Center determined that “Xiaohuamei” is “Yang Qingxia” despite obvious differences in physical appearance between the photo in “Yang’s” ID and the chained woman. The investigation also noted that “Xiaohuamei’s” name was changed to “Yang Qingxia” when it was written on her marriage certificate.
- Public security organs determined that the three dates of birth (listed on the marriage certificate, fake ID card, and birth certificate of Dong Zhimin’s second son) of dug up by netizens are false reporting, and the “real” date of birth of “Xiaohuamei” is listed as May 13, 1977 on her original household registration card.
- Public security organs again determined that DNA testing showed that the eight Dong children belong to Dong Zhimin and “Yang Qingxia.”
- The Jiangsu investigation team determined that “Yang Qingxia” was trafficked from Yunnan to Jiangsu’s Donghai County in early 1998, and she was later resold to the Dong family.
- The investigation team determined that “Yang Qingxia’s” missing teeth are due to periodontal disease; Chinese citizens have been saying that the chained woman’s teeth were pulled out as punishment for resisting rape.
- The investigation team explained DNA from “Yang Qingxia” was collected by public security in 2020 when Dong Zhimin secured local household registration for “Yang” so that he could apply for low income allowance.
- The investigation team claimed that the chained woman is presently being treated for mental illness and receiving medical care.
The Jiangsu investigation team report also announced the investigation and punishment of 17 Feng County officials over the chained woman case. The officials held accountable are from the health and propaganda departments, the public security bureau and the women’s federation, and the Feng Party Committee. In particular, Feng Party secretary Lou Hai was removed from his post, and Feng deputy Party secretary and county mayor Zheng Chunwei was given a serious warning and dismissed.
Societal reactions
Citizen investigations
The “Xuzhou chained woman” incident prompted several citizen investigations and fresh attention to the problem of women trafficking in Xuzhou. Notable episodes include:
1. On Feb. 7, Li Dacheng, a man from Sichuan’s Nanchong City, filed a petition with the Ministry of Public Security Criminal Investigation Bureau department overseeing crimes involving the trafficking of women and children. Li’s petition noted that the “Xuzhou chained woman” closely resembles a niece of his named Li Ying who went missing in December 1996 at the age of 12. Chinese netizens also noted a similarity based on photos shared by Li Ying’s family.
However, semi-official mainland media The Paper published a report on the same day. According to the report, Li Ying’s mother learned from the police on Jan. 29, 2022 that her daughter’s DNA does not match that of the chained woman.
2. On Feb. 12, two former investigative journalists from Yunnan Information Daily (雲南信息報) and another fellow journalist traveled to Yagu Village at their own expense to investigate the Xuzhou authorities’ claims that “Yang Qingxia” is “Xiaohuamei” from the village.
The village cadres, “Xiaohuamei’s” relatives and childhood playmates, and other relevant persons interviewed by the three former journalists were unable to identify “Yang” as “Xiaohuamei” after being shown photos and videos of the chained woman. Moreover, the journalists learned that the Xuzhou police obtained DNA samples of “Xiaohuamei’s” mother from her ethnic dress, and not from her hair, nails, or other parts of her body.
3. On Feb. 14, Wang Shengqiang, a Chinese director from Fengxian and producer of the program “Celebrity Interviews” (名家訪談) on state-run China Internet Information Center, published a Weibo post claiming that the chained woman is Li Ying.
Wang wrote that the “Fengxian eight-child mother” incident is “a matter of my hometown … [We] know it’s Li Ying, but some people can’t let her be Li Ying.” He added, “Fengxian chained woman’s teeth were pulled off with pliers. The man … resents her biting people, and pulled them off with pliers. My family belongs to Fengxian, and I have recordings from local villagers.”
According to Wang, Fengxian villagers exposed Dong Zhimin, his late father, and his young brother as having gang-raped the chained woman.
4. On Feb. 15, verified (“Big V”) Weibo user and former investigative journalist Deng Fei shared information about Dong Zhimin and “Yang Qingxia’s” marriage certificate and the birthday of their eldest son before pointing out three suspicious points:
- The chained woman looks very different from the photo of “Yang” on the marriage certificate;
- “Yang’s” birth date on the marriage certificate is listed as June 6, 1969, which makes her 52-years old. Deng Fei wrote that the chained woman does not look 52 despite having endured difficult conditions over a long period, and added that a 52-year-old is unlikely to have given birth to three children in the span of four years.
- “Yang Qingxia’s” eldest son is registered as being born in March 1997, but the Fengxian authorities said that Dong Zhimin’s father “picked up” the chained woman in June 1998. Deng notes that this refutes the “official” DNA test that the government claimed was proof that Dong and “Yang” are the parents of Dong’s eight children.
5. On Feb. 15, China Economic Weekly published an article noting that documents from the China Judgements website showed that the local court in Fengxian did not approve divorces of trafficked women. The article ran with the headline, “Trafficked Women Sue for Divorce! Fengxian Court: No Support! | Where is the Bottom Line of the Law?” (被拐賣婦女起訴離婚! 豐縣法院: 不予支持|法律的底線呢?).
6. Chinese netizens trawling through local government data uncovered what seemed to be a widespread problem of women trafficking in Xuzhou and Feng County.
From the Jiangsu local chronicles:
- In 1989, the Xuzhou local government rescued more than 800 trafficked women. Leaders of the All-China Women’s Federation visited Xuzhou and praised the local authorities for “actively protecting women’s rights and interests.”
- In 1992, the Xuzhou local government rescued over 1,200 trafficked women and children. Leaders of the Internal Affairs and Judicial Committee of the National People’s Congress visited the area and gave praise to the local authorities.
- In 2000, Xuzhou rescued more than 12,000 trafficked women and 5,400 trafficked children. This time, the leaders of the Ministry of Public Security visited the city and praised the local authorities for their achievements in combating trafficking.
- 2,013 out of 2,370 women (85 percent) of women in Feng County villages with household registrations outside Jiangsu Province migrated to the region for the reason of “marriage.” The proportion of such women is similar in counties in Xuzhou, county-level cities, and the rural areas in several other cities in northern Jiangsu, but this is not the case in other cities in Jiangsu.
- The proportion of women and ethnic minorities from Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan flowing into villagers in Xuzhou is abnormally high.
- A citizen survey of Yagu Village found that “Xiaohuamei” and her mother are both of the Nu ethnicity while “Yang Qingxia” should have been 41-years-old in 2010. However, the 2010 Xuzhou City census showed no one in the 40 to 44 year-old age group among the 31 Nu people in Xuzhou.
7. Chinese netizens claim that citizen investigations have verified that the chained woman in Feng County is Li Ying from Sichuan. They say that the chained woman disappeared from Sichuan when she was 12. She was first trafficked to Tongshan County (now Tongshan District) in Xuzhou City and was later resold in Fengxian County. Netizens believe that the chained woman is Li Ying because villagers from Dongji Village in Feng County know her by that name and said that she identified herself as “from Sichuan, surnamed Li” when she first arrived. Villagers also said that she could speak some English.
Netizens say that traffickers used the chained woman to sexually bribe officials because she had a pretty face. This disturbing arrangement, however, soon resulted in problems when the family members of “overbribed” cadres took up the issue with the village and town local governments. Later, Dong Zhimin was designated as a sort of handler for the chained woman due to his experience with mutilating trafficked women and eliminating them. Dong’s work meant that the traffickers and local cadres did not have to be concerned with the chained woman leaking secrets should she escape.
Public anger
The “Xuzhou chained woman” incident sparked much anger across China. Some in academia and entertainment started collecting signatures to petition the authorities to make a thorough investigation. Many online celebrities and thought leaders wrote on social media that they had cut off ties with friends who showed indifference or inhumane attitudes toward the chained woman and her plight. Even notable far-left, Party-affiliated personalities like Hu Xijin and Sima Nan questioned and criticized the local authorities’ investigation.
Meanwhile, some people created lists of products produced in Feng County and Xuzhou to boycott. Others sold shares of listed companies from those areas and refrained from buying bonds and trust plans issued by those local governments.
Some notable reactions include:
1. On Feb. 15, a hundred Peking University alumni published an open letter calling for an immediate investigation into the chained woman incident so as to “give people the truth and return justice to society.” Subsequently, the alumni of Renmin University, Zhejiang University, Sichuan University, Shandong University, and Tsinghua University issued similar appeals.
2. On Feb. 16, a financial self-media published an article titled, “What Urban Investment Bonds Does Feng County Have” (豐縣有哪些城投債). The article combs through the urban investment bonds issued by the Feng local government before noting that the county’s revenue in 2021 was only 3.3 billion yuan while its debt balance was as high as 12.3 billion yuan.
Some in financial circles proceeded to carry out a financial boycott of Feng County and practice “collectively risk avoidance” by not purchasing local government bonds and trust plans.
3. On Feb. 19, Lew Mon-hung, a former member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (representing the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region), sent an 1,800 character open letter to the CCP Central Committee and the PRC State Council requesting a thorough investigation of the “Xuzhou chained woman” incident and the punishing of culprits, according to the Chinese language edition of the Voice of America.
Lew’s letter also called for investigations and punishment of various crimes against humanity involving the trafficking of women and children in various parts of China, as well as various interest chains. Lew further called for the “complete eradication” of the “cancer of triadization” at the local grassroots level.
VOA reported that a poem by Li Youwei, the former Shenzhen Party Secretary, titled “Battle in Xuzhou” (戰徐州) was circulating online. The poem contained the verses, “The Way of Heaven cannot be destroyed! The people’s hearts cannot be lost! … All fight for Xuzhou! The light is ahead!”
4. On Feb. 20, Chinese Christians in the U.S. launched an appeal for solidarity with the chained woman and started collecting internet signatures.
5. On Feb. 21, Ye Jingzi, the chairman of the Hong Kong-based Brilliant Culture Group and granddaughter of the highly influential late Party elder Marshal Ye Jianying, published a Weibo post about the chained woman incident.
Ye wrote that what happened in Feng County is “definitely just the tip of the iceberg.” She later shared an article about how the daughter of a chemistry professor in Shanghai was kidnapped, sold, and tortured in Xuzhou about three decades ago. The professor eventually managed to rescue his daughter, but he had to pay off the captors with a substantial amount of cash. Worse, the perpetrators were not brought to justice. The professor’s daughter later succumbed to mental illness and torture injuries, and the grief-stricken professor proceeded to slowly poison the village’s water supply in revenge.
6. Inspired by the “Xuzhou chained woman” incident, many netizens took to social media to reveal harrowing experiences of being trafficked or nearly trafficked, or the stories of those around them who were trafficked.
Observers note that the many stories being shared suggest local government involvement in human trafficking and the formation of a trafficking “industrial chain.” The stories also show that educated, white-collar women (college students, researchers, Ph.D.s, etc.) from first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou are being targeted for trafficking alongside rural women from Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, likely because the officials participating in this business now are of an even higher rank.
Observers say that the stories suggest a pattern of local officials or public security officials raping the trafficked women before they are sold to the villagers. When they resist, the women are beaten and abused, including having their teeth pulled out and their legs broken. Many women are driven crazy by the tortue and are chained up to restrain them. There also appears to be a gruesome business involving the sale of corpses of women who are beaten to death or commit suicide.
International attention
International human rights groups and Western media outlets picked up on the “Xuzhou chained woman” incident. On Feb. 15, The New York Times ran an opinion piece titled, “Who Is the Real China? Eileen Gu or the Chained Woman?” Other news outlets in the English and Chinese-language press ran stories with a similar angle.
Stability maintenance
Party and state media, as well as all official women’s organizations, were largely silent on the “Xuzhou chained woman” incident until the Jiangsu government announced its investigation on Feb. 17.
After the Jiangsu investigation announcement and official media’s coverage of it, the CCP comprehensively stepped up stability maintenance efforts, including sealing off Dongji Village in Feng County on the pretext of “epidemic prevention.”
1. On Feb. 18, the authorities prevented a Hunan Television reporter from entering Dongji Village to do interviews about the chained woman incident on grounds of “epidemic prevention.” However, the reporter had a negative nucleic acid test and a green health code.
2. A 1989 book on women trafficking titled, “Ancient Sins—Documenting the Great Trafficking of Women in China” (古老的罪惡—全國婦女大拐賣紀實), circulated widely on the internet after the chained woman incident came to light. However, it was removed from all online bookstores with increased stability maintenance. Brick-and-mortar bookstore owners who specially promoted the book and other literature on trafficking were invited for a “chat” with the authorities and were made to remove the books from their shelves.
3. Some university alumni members who signed open letters petitioning the government to look into the chained woman incident were notified to withdraw their petition. Many universities and colleges also received instructions from higher-ups demanding that school staff and teachers stop discussing and spreading the word about the Feng County incident; one school even called up its staff individually to notify them of the instruction.
4. More than 100 people in Jiangsu and Anhui were summoned and questioned by public security officials about the source of “Yang Qingxia’s” marriage certificate and who leaked the document.
5. Some activists in various places received warning phone calls demanding that they delete all posts, pictures, and videos about the chained woman, as well as withdraw their signatures to petitions, lest they come to “bear the consequences” of their actions.
6. A Chinese netizen going by the moniker “Proud Girl” (驕傲女孩) who has been closely tracking developments in the chained woman incident tweeted four actions taken by the Jiangsu investigation team since it was deployed in Xuzhou.
First, the provincial investigation team invited dozens of people for a “chat” over the leaking of Dong Zhimin and Yang Qingxia’s marriage certificate. The people were warned that they could be called up for more “chats” in future.
Second, the investigation team set up a small group to analyze the vehicles passing through the town of Huankou.
Third, another small team was established to analyze all people passing through Huankou using face and gait recognition technology.
Fourth, the Jiangsu investigation team held public discourse prevention and control meetings with the local governments of districts and counties, as well as colleges and universities. During the meetings, the investigation team gave instructions to “do a good job” in stability maintenance and forbade internal personnel from participating in group and external discussions of the chained woman incident. The investigation team warned that the “relevant responsible persons” found guilty of group and external discussions will be fired and held accountable.
OUR TAKE
1. The “Xuzhou chained woman” incident is a microcosm of the evils produced by CCP rule over China.
Generations of brainwashing and indoctrination in atheistic, amoral Marxism-Leninism and “struggle” theory mean that despite China’s long civilized history and rapid economic development in recent decades, officials and common citizens are less likely to have any moral inhibitions about colluding with criminal elements, partaking in human trafficking, engaging in degenerate behavior, and becoming criminals themselves. Underworld elements are also more likely to flourish in the environment fostered by the CCP, allowing terrible crimes and human rights abuses to be perpetuated by both officials and criminals for prolonged periods without redress. For instance, the local Jiangsu chronicles show that the problem of women trafficking in Xuzhou was already being exposed in the 1980s, but only grew worse with time. The combination of CCP totalitarian control over society and the proliferation of triads at the grassroots level engenders a sort of lawlessness and greatly disincentivizes would-be Good Samaritans from speaking up about human trafficking—at least until the chained woman issue serendipitously blew up on social media.
The CCP political system and ethos mean that incidents like the “Xuzhou chained woman” are very often swept under a rug instead of addressed and justly rectified. The Party’s effort to portray itself as always “great, glorious, correct” and officials’ pursuit of political achievements to ensure career progression incentivizes the covering up of shameful issues like human trafficking. Official corruption, an endemic problem that spiraled out of control during the Jiang faction’s era of dominance (1997 to 2012), greatly worsened the issue of official-criminal collusion and gave officials even more reason to hide evidence of their malfeasance. Ironically, Xi Jinping’s effort to curb corruption, tighten Party discipline, and resolve miscarriages of justice is having the opposite effect of improving the officialdom and governance; officials fed up with Xi’s “chairman of everything” style, strict Party discipline, and lack of incentives for doing things on their own initiative appear to have “laid flat” on the “Xuzhou chained woman” incident, making a bad situation even worse for Beijing.
The clumsy and heavy-handed handling of the chained woman investigation by the various levels of local government in Jiangsu Province is also symptomatic of the CCP system’s underlying ills. The effort by the various local governments to impose an “official” narrative early on before changing it to paper over inconsistencies pointed out by citizen investigators indicates an unwillingness on the part of the authorities to conduct a proper probe and resolve the chained woman’s plight in a humane and reasonable way. This is to be expected in considering that a real investigation would likely unearth an unacceptable degree of official-criminal collusion and implicate far more than just the 17 officials that were held accountable.
It cannot be ruled out that officials could eventually silence the chained woman for good while she is in official custody and being treated for mental illness; the CCP is known to send Chinese dissidents to psychiatric hospitals for persecution and quiet elimination. Meanwhile, the authorities are again looking to suppress public anger rather than frankly address the issues of concern through the refined stability maintenance measures rolled out in Feng County and the curbing of public discourse more broadly.
Finally, the CCP’s “one-child” policy is partly to blame for the prevalence of human trafficking. Demographic imbalances (far more males than females in China) mean that there is a scarcity of women, a phenomenon that encourages their commodification by traffickers. The situation is worsened when there is soaring demand for women in rural areas with many bachelors and from corrupt officials.
2. Public reaction to the “Xuzhou chained woman” incident is comparable with that of the Lei Yang incident (see here and here for details) in May 2016. In comparison with the Lei Yang incident, the chained woman incident exposes far deeper problems with the CCP system and appears to be having a wider impact on society. The deep swell of anger generated by the chained woman incident adds to growing public discontent with CCP rule over recent humanitarian crises (draconian coronavirus prevention and control measures deployed in Wuhan, Xi’an, and elsewhere, the Zhengzhou floods, etc.), and is contributing to the steady erosion of the Party’s political legitimacy in the populace.
The ongoing effort by the authorities to snuff out discussion of the chained woman issue in the hopes of “disappearing” the matter could end up having the reverse effect of fanning the flames of public discontent. Chinese citizens incensed by the incident and having their confidence in CCP governance shaken by the latter’s mishandling of recent crises could seek to expose other things that the authorities have long sought to cover up, including corruption and various gross human rights abuses.
3. Xi Jinping is caught between a rock and a hard place on the chained woman incident regardless of how he handles it.
As we noted in the previous point, efforts by the authorities to cover up the incident could backfire for the Xi leadership if the Chinese people decide to work around censorship by exposing other evils of the CCP regime. The “anti-Xi coalition” stands to benefit when everyone is blaming Xi for the regime’s ills as it justifies the propaganda and political messaging that they are putting out. This will result in Xi suffering a critical loss of “quan wei” (authority and prestige) ahead of the 20th Party Congress, affecting his bid for a third term.
If Xi decides to take the side of the people and severely punishes many of the local officials involved in human trafficking, he would by his own hand tarnish the CCP’s “great, glorious, correct” image by airing the regime’s crimes and other dirty laundry. This would in turn make a mockery of Xi’s “historical resolution” and the CCP’s so-called century of achievements, severely undercutting both Xi and the CCP’s political legitimacy.
Beijing will be hoping that it can suppress public discourse and anger through its current cover-up efforts without provoking a new crisis. Failure to do so could prove disastrous for the Xi leadership.
SinoInsight 2
Pillsbury’s sources add that how Liu will be dealt with depends on his attitude towards admitting guilt. Liu could receive a stern internal Party warning under a lighter sentence, while a heavy sentence could see him expelled from the Party and imprisoned.
Pillsbury also said that Liu Yazhou could have been detained over his association with Jiang Zemin and Zeng Qinghong through his father-in-law Li Xiannian. While the Jiang-Zeng association “may have been nothing in the past,” it is now a “big deal” given the “current political ecology of Beijing,” according to Pillsbury. Pillsbury then implored Xi Jinping to let Liu Yazhou off to “focus on writing and researching major issues such as the Taiwan problem” on the account of Liu’s father-in-law and Liu’s role in helping Xi purge Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou.
OUR TAKE
Michael Pillsbury’s information is consistent with information circulating in Chinese language circles in December 2021 about the arrest of Liu Yazhou. Liu reportedly fell afoul of the Xi leadership for making mutinous remarks at public gatherings of Party princelings, including observing that Xi Jinping “lacks the ability to lead the CCP to victory in a ‘decisive battle’ over Taiwan where the regime’s fortunes are at stake, and requested ‘a change of commander-in-chief.’”
We earlier analyzed that Liu’s uncertain fate suggests that the Xi leadership is “wary of making him a ‘martyr’ and inspiring greater pushback in the lead-up to the 20th Party Congress.” Pillsbury’s indication that Liu has not yet been dealt with partly affirms our hypothesis.
Our earlier analysis also noted that Xi is facing pressure from the Party elite, including those in the military, to invade Taiwan and prove to them that he is worthy of serving another office term. Xi, however, appears to be currently more focused on arresting factional rivals, the anti-corruption campaign, and “self-revolution”than planning a Taiwan invasion, if Pillsbury information is reliable. From Xi’s perspective, the political risks of relinquishing some command over the military (by delegating the execution of the invasion to generals) before the 20th Party Congress is far greater than the political risks of taking out political enemies during that same period.
However, the volatile nature of factional struggle in the Party elite makes for a dynamic situation. Xi may or may not meet with strong internal backlash depending on how he ultimately prosecutes the Liu Yazhou case. The CCP elite could also seek to put more pressure on Xi on the issue of invading Taiwan regardless of how Liu is dealt with; for instance, weak Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will encourage Party elites to egg Xi into seizing the “window of opportunity” or confronting “unprecedented change unseen in a hundred years” by attacking Taiwan.
Xi will most certainly want to stick to his own timetables and methods in seeking “reunification” with Taiwan. Domestic and external developments, however, could play out in a manner that puts pressure on him to either bow to popular elite sentiment or double down on his own plans in securing his political future. Growing internal pressure over Taiwan could influence Xi to order more menacing maneuvers (more flights into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, Taiwan Strait sail-throughs, domestic military mobilizations, etc.) to appease the hawks in the interim, while stopping short of an invasion.
Governments need to closely track political signals from Beijing and developments in the CCP factional struggle to gauge in which direction Xi Jinping is headed on the Taiwan issue and internal matters.
