New book hints that Chinese President Xi Jinping fended off a coup

(Image credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

last updated 29 January 2016

A new book in China officially declares that senior Communist Party officials attempted to "wreck and split the party."

Analysts in China say these are code words for a coup attempt, The New York Times reports, and the fact that the book has been released is proof that President Xi Jinping is confident the challenge is over. Edited Excerpts From Discussions by Xi Jinping on Tightening Party Discipline and Rules sells for about $2, and the most interesting snippet is from a speech Xi gave on Jan. 13, 2015, to China's anticorruption agency. In the speech, Xi named five people — including an army general, a former party secretary of Chongqing, and a former security chief — who have all been imprisoned for corruption, abuse of power, or similar charges (one of the men died in 2015).

"The greater these people's power, the more important their position, the less seriously they took party discipline and political rules, to the point of recklessness and audaciousness," Xi said. "Some had inflated political ambitions and for their personal gain or the gain of their clique carried out political plot activities behind the party's back, carried out politically shady business to wreck and split the party." Ren Jianming, a professor at Beihang University, told the Times that "plot activities" and "wreck and split the party" are "coup activities, because it's the ruling party. It was the all very secret at the time, and this is the first time they have officially published about it, so it's very important."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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