For more than a decade, Chinese politics has been defined by one man: Xi Jinping. Since Xi assumed leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he has made himself into a strongman ruler. He has remade the CCP elite through a wide-ranging purge and corruption crackdown. He has curbed civil society and suppressed dissent. He has reorganized and modernized the military. And he has reinvigorated the role of the state in the economy.

Xi’s rise has also redefined China’s relationship with the rest of the world. He has pursued a more muscular foreign policy, including by increasing the tempo of military drills in the Taiwan Strait and overseeing a growing military presence in the South China Sea. He has encouraged (and then later reined in) a battalion of “wolf warrior” diplomats who engaged in a harsh war of words with foreign critics. And he has pushed China closer to Russia, even after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a war in Ukraine. In short, it has been a new era for China. It has been Xi’s era.

Soon, however, everything will start to change. As the CCP elite begins the search for a leader to replace the 72-year-old Xi, China is transitioning from a phase defined by power consolidation to one defined by the question of succession. For any authoritarian regime, political succession is a moment of peril, and for all its strengths, the CCP is no exception. The last time the party dealt with the problem of political succession—when Xi took over from Hu Jintao—rumors swirled in Beijing of coup attempts, failed assassinations, and tanks on the streets. The rumors may have been unfounded, but the political drama at the top was real.

Xi probably has years, perhaps even more than a decade, before he steps down. But the reality is that succession shapes political choices well before leaders finally relinquish control. Chinese rulers, sensitive to their legacies, jostle to install people who will carry on their political agendas. Mao Zedong’s fixation with maintaining China’s revolutionary spirit after his death led to the Cultural Revolution, a mass political campaign that reshuffled the CCP leadership repeatedly during the last decade of Mao’s life.

Xi’s succession is unlikely to be as catastrophic, but the prelude, execution, and aftermath of transitioning power will shape China’s foreign and domestic politics in the coming years. The United States and its allies may be tempted to exploit this internal disruption, but meddling in the process would probably backfire. Instead, they should be mindful of the fact that, in the past, fights over succession have contributed to disastrous Chinese foreign policy choices. The vacuum left by a strongman such as Xi will make succession especially challenging, potentially triggering a scramble for power and a fight over the direction of the country. Such instability in the world’s second-largest economy could ripple beyond China’s borders—particularly as China navigates its tense relationship with Taiwan.

THE MAO MODEL

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, in 1949, only one of Xi’s five predecessors stepped aside fully and willingly. Mao, the strongman founder of communist China, wielded overwhelming power and authority within the party-state apparatus and ruled the country until the day he died. Hua Guofeng, Mao’s heir, was able to hold on to power for only a few years before being pushed aside. Deng Xiaoping, the famous architect of China’s economic reforms, maintained his grip over the CCP’s most important decisions even after relinquishing his formal titles and positions. Until his health declined in the mid-1990s, Deng was said to be the most powerful man in China, even though his only formal title was honorary president of an association of bridge players. The man who succeeded Deng as paramount leader, Jiang Zemin, clung to the important post of military chief despite giving up his position as party leader, undercutting his successor, Hu Jintao. Only Hu gave up power all at once in a relatively orderly succession, to Xi, but that process was tainted by the dramatic downfall of a Xi rival and powerful Politburo member, Bo Xilai.

Xi’s return to strongman politics means his succession is likely to follow the pattern set by Mao and Deng, both of whom tried to select a successor who would rule as they would. Xi may see the challenge as discerning who among the thousands of cadres in the senior ranks of the CCP holds political beliefs similar to his own. But history also suggests that finding a political doppelganger will be insufficient. Whoever Xi taps will need to survive the cutthroat machinations of those he passes over. A new political game will begin the moment that Xi begins to step aside: Will those who remain inside the halls of political power support the new leader? Or will they resist the agenda that the new leader champions, undermine his authority, or conspire to remove him?

Here, Hua Guofeng’s story is revealing. Mao selected Hua in 1976, when Mao’s health was failing. The problem for Hua was that he was a cadre of middling status and influence within the CCP: someone whom Mao and his allies could control, and not a figure who could survive a political knife fight. Mao had written Hua a note that read, “With you in charge, I am at ease.” But even Mao’s word was not enough to keep Hua in power. In the end, he needed the military’s backing.

A struggle over succession is unlikely to stay inside China’s borders.

On the night of September 8, 1976, as Mao hovered near death, senior members of the Politburo gathered in a sickroom in the leadership compound in Beijing to pay their final respects. The chairman was no longer able to speak. Instead, he raised a frail hand and reached out to one visitor—Marshal Ye Jianying, one of the country’s most venerated military figures. Clasping Ye’s hand, Mao’s lips moved faintly, and Ye later told his colleagues that Mao instructed him to back Hua as his designated heir.

Mao’s choice to single out Ye, as opposed to the other civilian elites who would survive him, was intentional. Hua had little experience in national politics or with the military brass. When Hua’s enemies came for him, Ye and those with similar military credentials would have to decide whether to stand by him or abandon him. The head of the Chinese military was, as the sociologist Ezra Vogel has observed, the CCP’s de facto “kingmaker.”

Ye initially stood by Hua during the first assault on his leadership, which was launched immediately after Mao’s death by Mao’s wife and three radical compatriots known as the Gang of Four. With the support of Ye and other top military leaders, People’s Liberation Army troops arrested the gang. This ensured that Hua would hold on to power, but only as long as the PLA supported him. Just two years later, when Deng orchestrated a second challenge to Hua’s leadership, Ye and other military commanders sided with Deng, who had extensive social connections and personal rapport with senior military officers.

Delegates arriving for the closing session of the National People’s Congress, Beijing, March 2025 Tingshu Wang / Reuters

Xi will have multiple ways to credential his successor, but as the story of Mao’s troubled succession suggests, no facet of his successor’s dossier will be more important than his ties to and rapport with the military. Outside observers tend to downplay the role of the PLA in Chinese politics. After all, the Chinese military has never seized political control, as have armed forces in autocracies such as Argentina and Pakistan. To many, this suggests that modern China has cultivated strong norms of civilian control—such that the party unquestionably “commands the gun,” as Mao famously put it.

But the absence of direct military rule belies the quiet power that the PLA wields in China. The reality is that the Chinese military exercises a form of coercive control, shaping interactions among decision-makers. The reason is simple: even though Chinese leaders don’t fear a direct challenge from the military, they constantly face that risk from civilian rivals. And in such struggles, the PLA acts as an implicit kingmaker as civilian leaders try to manipulate the levers of control over the military to ensure that they, and not their opponents, have the upper hand. When Deng needed to bolster the standing of his chosen successors, for instance, he appointed his close ally Admiral Liu Huaqing, the father of the Chinese navy, to the Politburo Standing Committee—an unusually high promotion for a military officer that has not since been replicated.

It is tempting to think that China is so fundamentally different today that the military’s latent role in succession is the artifact of a bygone era. In reality, the military remains pivotal in China’s elite politics, and control over it will remain a key asset for future political leaders. The military does not pick leaders on its own—Xi was reportedly chosen because he beat Li Keqiang in a straw poll of current and retired civilian and military leaders—but military backing can make a leader immune to civilian challenges. Hu Jintao, for example, was considered politically weak in part because his career trajectory offered comparatively few opportunities to build personal connections to the military. When Hu entered office, he had no ties to the members inside China’s apex military organization, the Central Military Commission. In contrast, through what was likely a combination of fortuitous assignments and savvy politicking, Xi started with ties to four out of ten CMC members—a leg up that gave him the latitude to start a wide-ranging purge of rival elites and reorder the military brass. For personalist leaders such as Xi and Mao, continuous purges ensure that no rival power centers emerge and that the military stays loyal. Xi’s recent reshuffling of the CMC and the PLA shows that Xi is continuing to play this old game.

THE SUCCESSOR SHUFFLE

A fundamental dilemma of succession is that strong and competent successors can pose a threat to the leader himself. Being the next in line in China during periods of personalist rule is thus politically dangerous. Historically, Chinese strongmen have cycled through multiple successors before making their final selection. Mao, for instance, picked Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao as his potential heirs before casting them aside. He selected Hua only when his health was unmistakably failing. Once secure in his position, Deng followed a similar path, removing two presumed successors, CCP General Secretaries Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, before settling on Jiang Zemin.

All this suggests that Xi may have trouble settling on a successor. On the one hand, he needs to ensure that the successor learns how to operate the levers of power throughout the party and military bureaucracy. On the other hand, Xi will probably want to make sure his successor does not gain enough power to become an independent player too early. Moreover, if Xi is indecisive, shuffling through multiple candidates as Mao and Deng did, it could destabilize the CCP’s hold on power by creating opportunities for splits within the party elite.

The 1989 student-led protest movement, for instance, which led to violent repression at Tiananmen Square, began as a response to the sudden death of Hu Yaobang, the liberal leader who had been Deng’s most likely successor until Deng and other party elders removed him from his post as party secretary for being too lenient in response to an earlier wave of student protests. Hu’s death—a heart attack during a meeting of the Politburo—galvanized protesters partly because students saw a more liberal future for China slipping from their grasp. Student protesters pushing Chinese political leaders to adopt liberal reforms found tacit support from Deng’s second heir apparent, Zhao Ziyang, until Deng pushed him aside and placed him under house arrest. Jiang Zemin quietly arrived in Beijing in the middle of the protests to succeed Zhao, in part because party elites saw Jiang as someone who was ideologically palatable to all sides but a hard-liner on repressing protest.

PATH TO WAR?

The drama created by a struggle over succession is unlikely to stay inside China’s borders: it will affect China’s foreign policy and its relations with the rest of the world, as well. Xi is mindful of his legacy, and a sense that his time is limited may influence his decision-making and increase his appetite for risk—especially when it comes to Taiwan. He has instructed the military to be ready to carry out a campaign against the island by 2027. Although public reporting offers little evidence to definitively identify the conditions under which Xi would greenlight those moves, and there is no 2027 deadline for “reunification” with Taiwan, he clearly sees it as part of his program of national rejuvenation. If he hears the succession clock ticking, he could become more willing to gamble on war.

On the other hand, no legacy would be worse than being the leader who tried to unify with Taiwan—and failed. And despite the advances the Chinese military has made over the past decades, a successful blockade or invasion is far from guaranteed. And even if Xi succeeded on the battlefield, the cost might be high: China could become an international pariah, its economy sapped by sanctions, and its security forces saddled with a new, taxing mission of maintaining control of a restive Taiwan.

Once again, the PLA’s role might prove decisive. As Xi begins to hand over power, he will be constantly looking over his shoulder to ensure the military brass features the right mix of people with ties to the next in line and that the military is showing no signs of political disloyalty to Xi’s preferred successor. These conditions are ripe for the politicization of intelligence assessments and military judgments. It may be more difficult for subordinates to speak candidly about the costs associated with invasion, for instance, and China’s intelligence assessment processes could become tainted as analysts craft vague reports that can be interpreted as aligned with the leader’s thinking—no matter what it turns out to be.

Rumors of Xi’s ousting are indications of trouble down the road.

By now, Xi may be adept at mentally correcting for such analytical pathologies when he consumes intelligence reporting and military campaign projections. The challenge of extracting truthful reporting from the bureaucratic apparatus is not new for China; Mao famously commented that he shared U.S. President Richard Nixon’s distrust of diplomats, and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger cracked jokes together about the woes of the bureaucratic state. But it is an open question whether Xi will be able to keep one step ahead of his advisers’ assessments as he reaches his twilight years. Xi’s unwillingness to adjust course on his unpopular “zero COVID” policies, which led to protests in 2022, hints that he may not be getting crucial information. And whoever takes Xi’s place will likely lack the foreign policy experience necessary to know whom and what to trust.

More ominously, because of the military’s hidden hand in Chinese politics, war has served a useful political purpose during past successions. War provides an opportunity to showcase a new leader’s command over the PLA; seeing the senior military leadership obeying the new leader’s orders might then serve to deter a potential political challenger.

China’s short-lived invasion of Vietnam, in February 1979—the last time the PLA engaged in a full-scale conflict—offers a chilling reminder of how succession intrigue and miscalculation can work in tandem to push Chinese leaders to take up arms. The planning for the war coincided with Deng’s gambit to oust Hua. One of the reasons the invasion may have been attractive to Deng is that it offered an opportunity to send a not-so-subtle reminder of his deep military roots. In this way, the war’s battlefield outcome may have mattered less to Deng than its political upside in domestic politics.

At the same time, the assessment process before the war ranks among the worst in China’s history. Senior officers struggled to understand Deng’s strategic objectives and questioned whether the beleaguered PLA would be able to push Hanoi to the negotiating table. But because many knew that Deng favored military action, they kept quiet. The invasion failed in its primary strategic goal: to compel an immediate change in Vietnam’s policy toward the Soviet Union and Cambodia. Moreover, in the eyes of Vietnamese decision-makers, China’s lackluster battlefield performance highlighted how much of a toll the Cultural Revolution had taken on its military effectiveness—the exact opposite outcome that Chinese leaders were hoping to achieve.

HEIR UNAPPARENT

In China, the game of political succession plays out behind the high red walls of CCP headquarters at Zhongnanhai, making it difficult for outside observers to know what to look for and what to expect. The lack of public information about CCP politics also means that while Xi is in power, he will be subjected to regular rumors that he is in political trouble. This summer, for example, word circulated that Xi is on the verge of being pushed out of office, allegedly elbowed aside by his predecessor, Hu Jintao, and his military chief, Zhang Youxia. Such rumors about Xi’s premature political demise can usually be safely discounted. The odds that China’s top leader will be removed from office are not zero, but they are exceedingly small. Yet even if these rumors are not true, they are telling; indeed, they are products of a system of government in which the dynamics of leadership succession will play an increasingly urgent role.

As long as Xi is in good health, he will probably serve at least one more term, which would mean staying in power until 2032 or later, and he alone will likely decide who succeeds him. Previously, retired leaders have played important roles in the succession process, serving, for instance, on a ceremonial body called the party presidium. This time around, however, the party’s elders may sit the process out. At 82 years old, former General Secretary Hu Jintao is thought to be in poor health; in his most recent public appearance during the 2022 party conclave, he seemed to be confused as he was led off stage in a humiliating scene. Other surviving party elders are also unlikely to intervene; some, such as former premier Wen Jiabao, may lack the stature, and others, such as the retired premier, Zhu Rongji, are well past 90 years old.

If Xi dies without having picked a successor, there will be a scramble. According to the CCP constitution, the leader should be elected in a plenary session of the entire Central Committee, which has more than 200 members. Yet before this group convenes, a subset of party higher-ups, perhaps in consultation with retired leaders and military generals, would meet and essentially predetermine the outcome. A natural choice, should Xi die unexpectedly, might be Premier Li Qiang, who is 66. But there are no guarantees: a civilian with the backing of the military, security services, and enough of the Politburo could push him aside.

The best-case scenario might be for Xi to anoint a successor who is permitted to quietly build a base of power in Xi’s final years. Following the Tiananmen Square crackdown, Deng handed Jiang Zemin the formal posts of military and party chief in 1989 while Deng was aging but still vigorous. Jiang was a newcomer to both Beijing and elite politics when Deng handed him the reins. Jiang’s position, particularly his weak ties to the military, offered Deng continued leverage, and Deng used his final years to shepherd Jiang through his first years in power, insulating the novice leader from rivals while also pushing him firmly toward economic liberalism. By contrast, if Xi anoints a successor but refuses, or is unable, to allow him to build a power base, the next in line will be vulnerable to potentially chaotic leadership challenges after Xi dies—similar to what befell Hua Guofeng.

To follow the Deng model, Xi would need to select someone relatively young who can carry his agenda forward for years. He could first appoint his chosen successor to the position of head of the party secretariat, an important job that would familiarize him with the internal workings of the Politburo. And eventually, Xi may even make this person a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission to give him some experience with military affairs and the power to rule. The goal is likely for the successor to be ready to assume the top job when he is in his late 50s or early 60s.

Washington must avoid the temptation to exploit the succession challenge.

Strikingly, none of the current members of the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee fit this profile. Li Qiang will be in his late 60s in 2027 and in his 70s in 2032, significantly older than recent party leaders when they took office. Cai Qi holds the critical position as head of the party secretariat, a steppingstone to the top job, but he is only a couple of years younger than Xi. Ding Xuexiang will be 65 in 2027, which makes him a more plausible choice, but he has never governed a province or municipality, a likely prerequisite to ensure the successor is a competent administrator. The remaining three men—Li Xi, Wang Huning, and Zhao Leji—are also too old to be likely contenders.

The larger Politburo offers some more candidates, but each comes with a big asterisk by his name. Chen Jining is the party secretary of Shanghai, a job that both Xi and Jiang held—and, at 61, one of the youngest members of the Politburo. But Chen is not a sitting member of the Standing Committee, and Xi would probably want to elevate him a few years before he took over so he could learn the ropes. (Xi was elevated to the Standing Committee five years before he became CCP general secretary.) By the time Chen was ready, he would be older than Jiang, Hu, and Xi were when they took office.

The outside world would most likely learn of potential successors during the next party congress, which is expected in 2027, and which is usually when the CCP announces reshufflings of the Politburo Standing Committee. But looking at the field of candidates, if Xi makes his selection with an eye toward a 2032 handover, he will need to designate an older heir than has been typical, or he will have to go with a surprise dark horse who lacks the typical pedigree.

An older heir would mean that Xi’s hand-picked successor would not be able to carry Xi’s vision forward for very long, which could create further uncertainty for the country. Xi will want to avoid the problem that the Soviets faced in their regime’s last decade. After Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, his two aging heirs both lasted only a year in office before dying themselves. The result was the elevation of Mikhail Gorbachev, who oversaw the regime’s demise. Xi often speaks of the fall of the Soviet Union and wants to prevent China from suffering the same fate.

But a surprise pick would also be risky, because it would mean passing over all the current members of the 24-man Politburo. An entire generation of politicians, in other words, would lose the chance to lead—and their frustrated ambitions could shape Chinese politics for years to come. Such internal tension could create the opportunity for a politician to emerge from the wings, either with a reform agenda, as Deng did in 1978, or with an even more conservative and nationalist agenda than Xi holds.

COURSE CORRECTION?

All this points to a political atmosphere that will be increasingly tense as the problem of succession hovers over the party. Each year that Xi fails to identify and groom a successor will increase the possibility of more chaotic paths for the party and for China, such as the elevation of a weak successor who falls victim to a power struggle. In this way, the periodic rumors about Xi’s alleged political demise are urgent signals not because they are true but because they are indications of trouble down the road.

American policymakers should appreciate the risks inherent in China’s coming succession challenge, but they must also avoid the temptation to exploit it for geopolitical gain. Attempting to intervene in the succession process would violate principles of sovereignty and could elevate domestic political tensions in ways that outside actors cannot anticipate. Internal speeches show that the leadership, including Xi himself, still views the 1989 student-led protest movement as a plot by “hostile Western forces” to bring down the party, and this mistrust continues to color the U.S.-Chinese relationship.

Instead of meddling, the United States should let the process unfold while watching it closely. Although the party’s geopolitical assessments and ideological convictions are bigger than Xi, it is not unreasonable to expect a course correction from the post-Xi years, in which a more moderate and temperate leader emerges—someone who is not stridently nationalist and who can break down the walls that the current leadership has built around the country.

Indeed, in the past, the CCP has corrected course through the succession process. There is a hopeful lesson for the coming years in the transition from Mao’s radical socialism to Deng’s more pragmatic policy of reform and opening. “If we don’t reform, the party is at a dead end,” Deng famously said. Xi’s successor might come to the same conclusion.