Fu Longshan
Zhao Ziyang’s Mother Understood the CCP, He Took Sixteen Years to Catch Up
Zhao Ziyang, who served as China's prime minister and Communist Party general secretary during the 1980s, was among the most consequential reformers in the Party's history. He was stripped of power, placed under house arrest...
Zhao Ziyang’s Five Proposals Terrified the CCP Elite and Sealed His Fate
On May 16, 1989, the five proposals that Zhao Ziyang placed before his Politburo Standing Committee colleagues set off a sequence of events that ended in tanks on the streets of Beijing. Zhao, then the...
Why Xi Keeps Invoking the ‘Thucydides Trap’ With Trump
When Xi Jinping opened his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Beijing on May 14, 2026, his first question to Trump was whether the United States and China could "overcome the Thucydides Trap and...
How Deng Xiaoping Dismantled Mao’s Security Chief in 1978
Mao Zedong's personal security chief, Wang Dongxing, had spent thirty years as the most feared man in Zhongnanhai, the walled Party leadership compound in Beijing. He controlled the files that could destroy any senior official,...
How the Wuchang Uprising of 1911 Mirrors the CCP’s Coming Collapse
The Wuchang Uprising of 1911 that destroyed China's last imperial dynasty was triggered by a bomb-maker's accident, not a master plan. Revolutionaries scrambled, commanders hid under beds, and the Qing court collapsed before anyone fully...
How Beijing Used Three Communiqués to Trap Washington Into Abandoning Taiwan
The three communiqués that defined US-China relations were not diplomatic milestones. They were operations. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used each one to extract a concrete concession from Washington while making promises it had no...
Inside Beijing’s Jingxi Hotel: Accounts Detail CCP Investigations and Asset Seizures
The gray building sits on the western extension of Chang'an Avenue, Beijing's ceremonial spine, and in 2026 it continues to carry a reputation associated with internal Party matters. Historical accounts have long described the Jingxi...
How Mao Zedong Used Personal Warmth to Remove Senior CCP Leaders
Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, developed a pattern that became familiar to those around him. At moments when a person’s position had already been decided, Mao would often appear relaxed,...
How Jiang Zemin’s Mistress Network Ran China’s Shadow Government
Huang Liman, widely described by political observers and former insiders as a close associate of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin, built a political network in the southern city of Shenzhen. Analysts have...
Who Kept Zhao Ziyang Under House Arrest for 16 Years? The Answer Points to Jiang Zemin
Deng Xiaoping removed Zhao; Jiang Zemin made sure he stayed gone The initial decision to remove Zhao Ziyang and place him under house arrest in 1989 was made by Deng Xiaoping, China's then-dominant leader, after...
How the CCP’s Plan to Prevent a Second Cultural Revolution Produced Xi Jinping
In the 1980s, the CCP's senior leadership in the Zhongnanhai compound attempted a political experiment called the "Third Echelon," aimed at preventing a repeat of the Cultural Revolution's personality-cult dictatorship. The program was championed by...
How Stalin Humiliated Mao Zedong in Moscow — and Why Mao Never Forgot It
In December 1949, Mao Zedong boarded a special train and traveled for nearly two weeks across Soviet territory to reach Moscow. He had come to celebrate Stalin's seventieth birthday and, more urgently, to negotiate a...