Signals Revealed by Cai Qi and Shi Taifeng at the CCP Organization Ministers’ Meeting

The picture shows Cai Qi, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, attending the National People's Congress on March 12, 2023. (Screenshot from the web)

[People News] On January 15, the annual National Conference of Organisation Ministers of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was held in Beijing. Cai Qi, member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee and Secretary of the CCP Central Secretariat, attended the meeting and delivered a speech. Shi Taifeng, member of the CCP Politburo and Minister of the Central Organisation Department, presided over the meeting and made work arrangements.

Judging from Cai Qi’s remarks in the opening paragraph of the Xinhua report—where he mentioned habitual phrases such as “Xi Jinping Thought” and the loyalty formula “two establishments, four consciousnesses, four confidences, two safeguards (二四四二)”—Xi Jinping’s status still appears to be that of the sole supreme leader. However, one should not overlook Cai Qi’s repeated references to “the Party Central Committee” and “the Party” in his speech. If Xi were truly still the unchallenged “one supreme leader,” such phrasing would be unthinkable.

Specifically, in addition to mentioning Party building, Cai Qi emphasized that it is necessary to “uphold and strengthen the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, continue to use the Party’s innovative theories to unify thinking, will, and action, improve mechanisms for implementing the Party Central Committee’s major decision-making and deployments, promote the Party’s leadership to fully cover all areas and be carried through consistently, and ensure that the Party Central Committee’s decisions and deployments are implemented fully and without compromise.”

Clearly, Cai Qi’s language conveys the message that the “Party Central Committee” stands above Xi. This is because he spoke of ensuring the implementation of the Party Central Committee’s decisions and deployments, rather than the implementation of Xi Jinping’s instructions or directives.

If one argues that Cai Qi deliberately placed Xi behind the “Party Central Committee” in order to conceal the truth of Xi’s loss of power, then Shi Taifeng’s speech makes Xi’s real status even clearer. In his remarks, Shi placed “upholding and strengthening the centralised and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee” ahead of “Xi Jinping Thought,” explicitly signalling Xi’s diminished position.

For those who still harbour doubts, they need only compare reports of similar meetings in January 2025 and 2024. In a system like the CCP’s, where reporting is strictly controlled, how something is reported and how many words are used are directly tied to changes in top-level power. Such comparisons, therefore, offer a window into shifts at the highest levels of the CCP.

At the National Conference of Organisation Ministers held on January 17, 2025, Cai Qi mentioned only “Xi Jinping Thought,” the “two establishments,” and the “two safeguards,” and spoke of “thoroughly studying and implementing Xi Jinping’s important thinking on Party building.” Nowhere did he mention the “Party Central Committee,” let alone “the centralised and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee” or “the Party Central Committee’s decision-making and deployments.” Li Ganjie, who was then head of the Central Organisation Department, did the same, mentioning only “Xi Jinping Thought” and urging organisation departments to keep Xi’s important requirements firmly in mind.

At the National Conference of Organisation Ministers held in February 2024, Cai Qi continued his consistent style of flattering Xi. In addition to mentioning “Xi Jinping Thought” twice, he invoked the loyalty slogan “二四四二,” calling it the “highest principle,” and claimed that the achievements of the past year were “fundamentally due to Xi’s steering and leadership.” As for the “Party Central Committee,” it was not even in his line of sight. Li Ganjie was the same.

How should these two earlier meetings be interpreted? The January 2025 meeting took place more than half a year after Xi Jinping suffered a health incident at the Third Plenum in July 2024. At that time, power struggles within the CCP leadership were still intense, and Xi and members of his faction were not necessarily willing to relinquish power. The status of the “Party Central Committee” had not yet been clearly established.

It was not until late June 2025, when the Regulations on the Work of Central Deliberative and Coordinating Bodies were issued—signalling that a power organ above the Politburo was formally steering CCP politics—and until the Fourth Plenum in late October officially announced a return to collective leadership, that Xi’s loss of power became unmistakably clear. Even so, before an official announcement, Xi still had to continue acting on the front stage.

In 2024, Xi still firmly held power. Naturally, his close allies Cai Qi and Li Ganjie showed loyalty to him. When Xi was the sole supreme leader, Xi himself was the “Party Central Committee,” so it was unsurprising that propaganda reports downplayed references to the “Party Central Committee.”

A careful look at official media reports shows that since last year’s Fourth Plenum, “the Party Central Committee” and “collective leadership” have become mandatory elements in speeches and articles by senior CCP officials. Even Xi’s staunch loyalist, Chen Xi, president of the Central Party School, has had to submit. In official media coverage on January 15 of the 2025 autumn semester graduation ceremony at the Central Party School (National Academy of Governance), the wording appeared: “further strengthening the political, ideological, and action-based consciousness of implementing the Party Central Committee’s decisions and deployments fully and without compromise.” Such language did not appear in previous graduation ceremonies.

As more and more signs point to the weakening of Xi’s power, will this year’s Fifth Plenum of the CCP finally lift the lid?

(First published by People News)