Why Does Xi Keep Purging Loyalists? Look to Stalin and Mao for the Answer.

No matter what Americans think of their politics, the United States still operates in the open. When the most powerful politician and the richest businessman fell out, the public got the full spectacle: barbed posts on social media and sniping in speeches.

China is the opposite. The country still doesn’t know why former President Hu Jintao was abruptly escorted out of the 2022 Communist Party congress, or what really happened when former Premier Li Keqiang died at 68 in 2023. And decades later, the full story of Lin Biao, Mao Zedong’s chosen successor, who fled China and died in a plane crash in 1971, is still unknown.

The secrecy has spawned a niche industry of “bedside eavesdroppers” — Chinese online commentators who parse rumors and fleeting clues for signs of political shifts. Their YouTube videos dissect the gait, complexion or media appearances of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and can draw millions of views from outside the country’s internet firewall.

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