China's Leadership Retreat: A Look into the Country's Power Dynamics

The annual summer retreat of China's top leaders in Beidaihe has come to an end. This seaside resort town, located 180 miles east of Beijing, has been a hub for informal meetings and policy discussions among the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders for decades.

The retreat has its roots in the Qing dynasty, when leaders would govern from Beidaihe due to its cooler climate compared to Beijing. Mao Zedong institutionalized the retreat as a semi-formal practice in the early 1950s, allowing leaders to resolve contentious decisions in private and appear unified in public.

Historically, the retreat has been the place where much of the real work of high-level CCP politics gets done ahead of the choreographed plenums and congresses in the fall. This process allows leaders to resolve policy and personnel issues behind closed doors, promoting a unified front in public.

Beidaihe has also given party elders, retired leaders who retain considerable influence over policy and personnel, a place at the table. They can promote the careers of their protégés and sideline their rivals, shaping the country's power dynamics.

Under Xi Jinping's rule, the once-collective gathering has become something else. Xi has outlived powerful leaders like Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji, making it clear that Hu Jintao, his immediate predecessor, is powerless. As Xi has purged his own potential successors, the prospect of collective leadership is well and truly dead.

Some analysts argue that Beidaihe has become irrelevant under Xi's one-man rule. However, it's possible that the nature of the power struggles has merely changed, with lower-ranking party officials competing for face time to assure Xi of their loyalty or push their own policy agendas.

The retreat is not a vacation, but a time for leaders to hammer out policy decisions ahead of the fifth plenum in October. One of the peculiarities of authoritarian life is that one can never quite escape one's colleagues. China's leadership may feel a touch sorry for themselves, but they are not alone in this.

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China, meanwhile, has been sharpening its own sanctions and export-control tools for months. Beijing has so far refrained from turning the screws as hard as it could, wary of prompting a more concerted U.S. effort to reroute supply chains.

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### Tech and Business

The animated film *Niu Lai* (“*The Ox Arrives*”), initially panned by critics, has become a surprise box-office hit in China. After earning less than 8,000 yuan in its initial release, the film went viral and began packing theaters, taking in more than 15 million yuan in a single weekend.

The film's low budget and lack of a press kit have contributed to its cult following. Viewers appreciate its authenticity in an age of AI art and state-censored entertainment. However, the CCP has reportedly pulled the film from cinemas this week, highlighting the tension between the government's desire for control and the public's desire for creative freedom.