Fu Longshan
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...
Why Reagan Still Haunts Beijing: What Deng Xiaoping Saw in 1981
On a cold afternoon in Washington on March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan stepped out of the Hilton Hotel and into gunfire. Six shots in three seconds. One bullet struck the presidential limousine, deflected, and entered...
Xi Jinping’s Succession Trap
A phrase reportedly circulating inside Zhongnanhai, the walled compound in central Beijing where China's top leaders live and work, captures the mood inside the Chinese Communist Party's ruling elite: "The air in Beijing is colder...
Deng Xiaoping’s 18-Day Vietnam War and Why China Avoids Military Conflict Over Iran
In February 1979, Chinese troops crossed into northern Vietnam. Eighteen days later, Beijing declared its objectives met and began withdrawing. The speed of that campaign has never been seen as accidental. Deng Xiaoping had just...