3-7 China’s “July First Succession Shift”: Definition and Speculated Causes

Numerous reports confirm that the leaders of the United States and China will meet in mid-May 2026. This represents a crucial victory for the United States. Without investing excessive political resources, the US has secured a strategic truce of approximately four years simply by arranging a summit meeting. Due to the political environment surrounding this summit and its subsequent political effects, the process of China’s reunification with Taiwan has been postponed until at least 2029, or even later. This provides the US with at least four crucial years for recovery. The US can use this window to restore and even strengthen its overall warfighting capabilities and overall national competitiveness. China, on the other hand, is thus placed on a strategic defensive position. It cannot be ruled out that China may forever lose the historical opportunity to grow into a dominant empire.

The imperial path is the only way to solve China’s practical problems, especially those based on economics, costs, normal profit returns, giving back to the people, reducing public resentment, resisting external plunder, and resisting the oppressive order. Before establishing a power skeleton (the outward framework of an empire), any “shortcut” is unsustainable and unsustainable. This is because the power to set rules is in the hands of others; the strongest capital forces do not support you (capital must be parasitic within a power framework, with politics and capital coexisting as a dual authority); economic adjudication power is in the hands of others. You may work hard for 10 years, but someone can easily steal your profits by changing the rules. With a little instigation, outsiders can plunder your interests. With a little provocation, your former friends can demand exorbitant prices. If you try to govern with finance, capital will inevitably strip you of your independent decision-making power. If you try to introduce easily controllable, scattered foreign capital, it will inevitably affect your organizational capabilities and domestic stability. If you only cultivate the imperial core with “internal friction costs,” the imperial core cannot develop in the long term and will inevitably shrink. Without the “empire’s external framework” to support the “empire’s core,” the empire’s core cannot be maintained properly.

China’s moderate elites completely subscribe to Western assessment systems when evaluating the nation’s overall strength, overall war capability, and overall competitiveness. This leads them to unanimously oppose China’s plan to unify Taiwan by force. Their opposition is based on their fears, primarily embodied in the following pillars. However, Ye Qiquan’s views are completely opposite. Ye Qiquan believes that China’s overall national war capability will have surpassed that of the United States by 2022; Japan and South Korea, while initially inevitable participants in a Sino-US war, will inevitably join China’s camp in the later stages; forceful unification is a shortcut to rapidly establishing a new East Asian order; the new East Asian order is the cornerstone of the Sino-Asian empire; the new East Asian order is the cornerstone that forces the United States to choose the “North American-East Asian axis”; the establishment of the next generation of world order will inevitably involve a period of chaos; the Taiwan base, the new East Asian order, and China’s forceful unification action are key to shortening this period of chaos; compared to other options, the “North American-East Asian axis” is more readily accepted by the Americans.

Beyond the “effective range” advantage of China’s strategic weapons, its operational-level weapons also possess a reliable “effective range” advantage compared to the United States. This gives China a de facto battlefield advantage in all levels of conventional warfare. This advantage is overwhelming, especially when China pursues a “defensive-offensive strategy.” [Note 2: Even with China’s substantial investment in developing its aircraft carrier battle groups, their role in a Sino-US conflict in East Asia will primarily manifest as battlefield isolation or theater deterrence. In a “defensive theater” in East Asia, China’s winning force will be theater-wide medium-range missiles. In an “offensive theater” in Taiwan, China’s winning force will be short-range missiles, battlefield drones, and battlefield robots. In a “defensive theater” targeting Europe’s overall involvement in the East Asian theater, China’s winning weapon is the strategy of “creating chaos in Europe and defeating the enemy outside the defensive zone.” The real bottom line ensuring China’s survival is possessing 3,500 nuclear warheads and demonstrating to the people of North America and Europe its resolve to use them.] This is China’s ability to “preemptively eliminate the option of nuclear war”.

A political assumption is that the old imperial order, dominated by the United States, relied on four main pillars of power: the North American pillar, the European pillar, the East Asian pillar, and the Israeli pillar. In China’s construction of its imperial structure, the East Asian pillar of the United States is the first to be impacted. The United States must first assess this reality and formulate the best response plan. China has reached a historical juncture in building its imperial structure. Closing its security gaps in the East is crucial to the speed and success of its imperial construction. Its focus is not only on East Asia but also inevitably includes the security of Southeast Asia, the Strait of Malacca, and the Indian Ocean passage. The competition between these two established players and newcomers dominates the process of building a new order in East Asia. However, Russia is not inactive. It may become a key third party, reaping significant unexpected gains in balancing European actions.

This is the most comprehensive and in-depth collection of documents to date studying China’s “July 1st Mechanism.” China will issue a notice on July 1, 2025, announcing the establishment of a “Central Committee Decision-Making and Coordination Body.” This is essentially a notice of a transfer of power execution procedures in China. From this day forward, the execution procedures of China’s highest power will enter a new system. The final decision-making power in this new system has been transferred from the Xi Jinping group to the “Central Committee Decision-Making and Coordination Body” created by the “July 1st Mechanism.” However, the construction of this power mechanism has structural flaws. These structural flaws mean that none of the three parties involved are completely victorious or completely defeated. None of them have completely won or completely perished. The possibility of one party suddenly being completely resurrected or another suddenly being completely destroyed cannot be ruled out.