Today’s briefing:
— Xi’s throwing a party
— Tragedy hits Spain
— Simba’s first deployment
Your Insider’s briefing:
— Xi’s throwing a party
— Tragedy hits Spain
— Simba’s first deployment
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. We’ve never hit send on a briefing quite like this one, which really has everything:
Dance choreography from Step Up
Management lessons via Lion King, and
Architecture courtesy of James Bond.
Enjoy.
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
🏛️ We’re off tomorrow but Insiders will get Intrigue’s special edition on Tuesday’s high-stakes US midterms! So become an Insider today!
Downfall of the day
Weil, Gotshal & Manges
That’s Manhattan’s storied ‘white shoe’ M&A law firm, whose leadership is now recommending its partners vote to dissolve after a mass exodus of top dealmakers earlier in the year. Founded in 1931, the influential firm struggled to match the increasingly lucrative pay packages its rapidly expanding rivals were offering.
Ain’t no party like a Communist Party.
Imagine one of those awful corporate offsites, but instead of trust-falls and icebreakers, everyone is terrified of being purged by Friday.
Welcome, dear Intriguer, to China’s Fifth Plenum.
The chair? None other than Xi Jinping himself.
The guests? We’re talking the absolute crème de la freakin crème from the Party’s all-powerful Central Committee: ~200 ‘voting’ members plus ~170 non-voters.
The choreography? Tighter than Step Up, Step Up 2 (The Streets), Step up 3D, Step Up (Revolution), and Step Up (All In)… combined.
The point? These quasi-annual Plenums (or Plena for Latin nerds 🤓) serve as key touchpoints for Xi and his close circle to set China’s path on the big issues.
So, here are the five intriguing things to know, starting with…
The theme
These Plenums usually rotate through seven themes: the first and second after each Party Congress finalise top leadership appointments, the third gets into the economy, the fourth gets more into Party / discipline, the fifth looks at the next Five-Year Plan, and the sixth weighs into culture and ideology, until the seventh high-fives all the above before finalising details for the next Party Congress.
By that system, this year’s fifth Plenum should’ve been about the next Five-Year Plan, but things are now all out of whack after China skipped an earlier Plenum in 2023 (without explanation btw, though Beijing was navigating a widening real estate crisis, internal purges, and a Biden-Xi summit at the time).
So instead, this Plenum focused on Xi’s fave topic: his Party. State outlets put it like this: “The stronger the Party's capacity to govern itself, the stronger its capacity to govern the country.” You can’t argue with that. Under Xi Jinping, you literally can’t.
But while it sounds like standard jargon, this theme reflects a lingering frustration for Xi: after years of corruption crackdowns, terrified cadres now pass every minor decision up the chain rather than show any initiative. This “lying flat” (tangping) approach to self-preservation hasn’t fixed the corruption, but it has exacerbated China’s bureaucratic paralysis, right as China’s challenges mount.
Anyway, we don’t traditionally hear much about each Plenum’s specific decisions until days or weeks after the formalities conclude, but we can already take a look at…
The (shorter) guestlist
These Plenum guestlists keep getting shorter. In fact, last year’s fourth Plenum had the lowest attendance since the Cultural Revolution! And to be clear, this isn’t because the venue suddenly ran short of banquet chairs.
Rather, it’s because Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao, keeps purging anyone causing trouble, whether it’s corruption, perceived disloyalty, or a mix of both. In fact, during the first nine months of the year, he already placed 71 (!) senior civilian and military leaders under investigation. And since last year’s Plenum, he’s ousted another three from the all-powerful 24-member Politburo!
That’s why this year, full-time China nerd and friend of Intrigue Neil Thomas estimates attendance might be even lower, down to 77% of the original 376. That tracks with state media whispers that there are “roughly 300” members inside.
Once the actual list drops, China-watchers will scour it to confirm a) how many more Party members have now been purged, and b) who’s left to carry out Xi’s plans.
All this leads up to…
New appointments?
These mid-term Plenums aren’t really a time to appoint new leadership, but it has happened before (most recently in 1994!), and some folks wonder if Xi might try that again given his purges have left important gaps in China’s top military brass.
In fact, after his last two purges from the top Central Military Commission earlier this year, that all-powerful CMC now only has two members! And one is Xi himself!!
So it’s possible Xi could decide to rebuild the CMC at this Plenum to reward loyal lieutenants or calm whispers around the military’s readiness. Or he could wait until…
Next year’s Party Congress
If the seven Plenums are like appetisers (passed apps?), the main course is really the Party Congress every five years, with the next due late in 2027. To give you a sense just how important they are, recall Xi used the last Congress (2022) to secure his norm-breaking third term. He’ll now help himself to a fourth term next year.
So, many folks think Xi’s recent fixation on discipline and Party self-governance might be all about getting everyone in line ahead of his own next self-coronation.
But now that he’s 73 years old, keep an ear to the ground for…
The 7G
Not your next cell network, but the Party’s seventh generation, being cadres born in the 60s-70s. They now make up around 8% of the Plenum / Congress attendees, but that number is expected to grow significantly at the next Congress as earlier Gs retire.
And with Xi now holding onto the top job indefinitely, the real Intrigue™ lies in which of these fresh-faced new 50-somethings might get fast-tracked into new roles, or even (gasp) get groomed as Xi’s eventual successor.
Intrigue’s Take
Political scientists like Fukuyama might just see here more evidence of China’s historic Bad Emperor problem: while post-Mao reformers like Deng equipped the Party with things like term limits and collective leadership to avoid this trap, Xi has now…
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Intrigue’s Take
Political scientists like Fukuyama might just see here more evidence of China’s historic Bad Emperor problem: while post-Mao reformers like Deng equipped the Party with things like term limits and collective leadership to avoid this trap, Xi has now spent his decade+ in power meticulously dismantling many of those same safeguards. The result is a superpower and its periphery (all of us) hinging more on one man’s whims, without anyone there to yell stop when a policy fails.
So Xi, like the good Marxist-Leninist he is, seems to think the answer to China’s Bad Emperor problem is just to lean harder into Party purity: brighter and cleaner cadres will simply make better decisions, right? But at some point he’ll hit the possibility that this approach might just feed the rot it claims to cure.
Or to put it another way: when an authoritarian state erects tollbooths everywhere to control anything from real estate loans to tech IPOs, each tollbooth itself just becomes another vector for corruption. So it’s like trying to treat an infection with medicine that’s already riddled with the infection itself.
By the way, this isn’t just a China problem (though as ever, China goes big). Rather, recall that the value in open societies is, sure, the dignity afforded to citizens, but also the broader sales-pitch for all humanity: that you don’t need to ban the opposition, jail dissenters, execute apostates, or bully neighbours to build a strong society. And yet when free capitals spend more time mired in polarisation, ethics scandals, and institutional decay, that sales pitch loses its shine.
And we’re not just pontificating here: a decade ago, Transparency International listed 12 countries scoring above 80% for public-sector integrity. Now? There are only six left in that club (Denmark, Finland, Singapore, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden right on 80%). The US? It’s down 12 points over the last decade.
So while China’s Bad Emperor trap might now be self-imposed, it still leaves the rest of us with a double-lobed headache: sure, an opaque, unchecked Beijing, but also a free world whose own democratic machinery is sputtering right when we need it most.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇪🇸 SPAIN — High-speed tragedy.
Spain is entering three days of national mourning over yesterday’s horror train collision that left 68 dead in Toledo. (BBC)
Comment: Spain’s impending snap elections, plus the fact this is now the country’s (and specific rail-line’s!) second fatal high-speed rail disaster this year, will transform what might ordinarily be a technical investigation into another sharp political test for Pedro Sánchez’s government. It’s also turning Spain’s high-speed rail network — long a source of national pride — into yet another source of uneasy introspection.
🇰🇭 CAMBODIA — Cruising for a bruising.
A luxury cruise ship attempting a years-long global voyage (MV Odyssey) has suspended operations and left 203 mostly American passengers stranded in Sihanoukville, after soaring fuel costs crippled its financial model. (Guardian)
Comment: Monthly fuel bills per cabin apparently skyrocketed from $1,800 to $8,000 after Hormuz got squeezed. More low-margin, fuel-dependent business models will fail with each month that prices float high.
🇹🇷 TURKEY — Another UN contender.
Ankara is reportedly adding its own name (former foreign minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu) to the list of candidates still hustling to replace UN chief António Guterres when his term wraps the end of this year. (Turkiye Today)
Comment: Again, we ask… why? The Turks presumably concluded that the original candidates are all now deadlocked amid Security Council opposition, while the UAE’s own new plan to sprint through the middle (via Emirati envoy Lana Nusseibeh) has wobbled over something we flagged weeks ago: she’ll have to explain why her Gulf monarchy (✌️allegedly✌️) backs the RSF war criminals in Sudan’s civil war. Plus Turkey would hate to see a regional rival get the top job. But whereas the Emirati candidate at least cleared one hurdle (gender), Turkey clears neither (it’s traditionally now the turn for someone from Latin America or the Caribbean). Regardless, Turkey has probably calculated the cost of seeing a regional rival on top would be worse than the wrath of a distant region scorned. A lot probably also depends on where China lands, having long insisted it’s now Latin America’s turn. It’ll be wary of burning bridges in a region it still wants to contest.
🇮🇱 ISRAEL — Cliff-hanger.
The defence minister (Katz) has criticised the opposition leader (Eisenkot) for his post-election speech calling on security chiefs to “stand firm against any attempt to pressure” them. It comes amid continued speculation that Netanyahu (still caretaker prime minister for now) might soon join the US in resuming hits on Iran. (Times of Israel)
Comment: With Netanyahu’s ruling coalition headed towards an estimated 53 seats, ahead of Eisenkot’s opposition on ~48, it means neither side has the magic 61-seat majority, but the coalition-talk advantage now really sits with Netanyahu. This could take weeks or months.
🇧🇷 BRAZIL — Miami viceroy.
As we flagged yesterday, conservative erstwhile presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro ended up landing in Miami, where he immediately declared himself the “legitimate leader of Brazil”, now operating in exile amid what he insists are politically motivated charges back home. (Miami Herald)
Comment: Emotions are high and the left’s President Lula remains reviled by half the country, but Brazil’s broader conservative establishment really seems exhausted by the legal chaos, family drama, and endless clashes with the judiciary. So the longer Flávio stays stateside, the more likely his party baton gets passed to the popular and market-darling governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas.
🇷🇼 RWANDA — Sanctioned.
The US has imposed sanctions on Rwanda’s defence ministry plus a state-aligned bank over their support for the M23 militia now occupying vast swathes of eastern DR Congo. The sanctions also hit the bank for helping finance arms shipments from China. As ever, Kigali denies it all. (Reuters)
Comment: This is a big US escalation, going beyond the individual warlords to sever the official arteries sustaining them. The US is probably hoping to force Rwanda to honour its peace commitments from last year, though M23 might now be sitting on enough critical minerals to not care.
🇷🇺 RUSSIA — The Starlink proxy trail.
Turkish authorities have detained 85 suspected members of the “Daltons”, which sounds like the friendly new family who just moved in ‘round the block but is actually an international criminal network. Investigators are tying the arrests to last month’s Russian intelligence arson at a critical Starlink ground station in Poland. (The Insider)
Comment: Russia has a long history of outsourcing sabotage to criminals. What’s more novel is the immediate victim (in this case Elon Musk) still pretending the problem is Ukraine.
Extra Intrigue
Meanwhile, in other worlds…
Film: New Zealand’s Taika Waititi has released Klara and the Sun, his film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s legendary sci-fi novel exploring the whimsical possibilities of human-AI ties. It’s splitting critics (we loved it, but let us know!).
Art: The latest British Art Market Report suggests the UK is the world’s second-largest art market by value, comprising half the value of the entire European market, though growing more slowly than the US (🥇) and China (🥉).
Architecture: British automotive firm Aston Martin (of Bond fame) has unveiled its first branded residence in the US (upstate New York), building on the success of its first residence anywhere, sold in Tokyo last year.
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Meme of the day
Courtesy of our resident meme-lord, @DickerPicss
Remember that iconic Lion King moment where Mufasa sweeps his paw across the golden savanna and promises little Simba that one day, he’ll rule it all?
Well Intrigue’s very own Jeremy insists above that this is exactly what it’s like when you arrive at your new embassy posting and get a brief handover chat with (or curt note from) the diplomat you’re replacing.
Except instead of that majestic vista, there’s a sprawling horizon of unmitigated crises, endless email chains, toxic office vibes, and friendly neighbourhood line agencies sending your draft back with “minor track changes” for the seventh time.
Oh, and that shadowy place beyond the border that Mufasa warns you should never visit? That may or may not be the embassy’s intel station, but you’re not cleared that high and really shouldn’t have even asked that question. In fact, we’re going to have to make a note on your file.
Thursday quiz
We’re bringing forward our end-of-week quiz to make space for tomorrow’s midterms special edition (become an Insider to get it, btw).
