China's Military Just Tried to Kidnap Xi!

In this explosive episode, we break down what may be the biggest geopolitical story of the decade: a failed military coup attempt against Xi Jinping in January 2026. Top PLA leaders (including key Central Military Commission figures) were purged after an alleged raid on Xi’s hotel residence in Beijing led to a firefight and mass arrests. Xi has gutted the military leadership, leaving only loyalists in place.

We discuss:

* The timeline of purges, assassination attempts, tunnel explosions, and the leaked coup plot

* Why Xi’s consolidation of power is accelerating China’s path to collapse (demographics, food/energy insecurity, real estate bubble)

* The scary logic: Why attacking Taiwan (or elsewhere) might now make “sense” for Xi personally, even if it’s suicidal for China

* Parallels to autocracies throughout history and why centralized power always ends this way

* Why the West (and AI progress) might secretly benefit from chaos in China

* Bonus riffs on US domestic distractions (Minneapolis/ICE protests), organ harvesting rumors, and why nobody seems to care about real global inflection points

This is NOT mainstream coverage — it’s the raw, unfiltered analysis you won’t hear elsewhere. If you’re tired of slop-stream media ignoring the real threats, this is for you.

Sources & further watching: Lei’s Real Talk (summarized transcripts used), Winston & Laowai’s old China motorcycle vlogs for real cultural insights (sort videos by oldest).

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today and I mean, I’m actually excited ‘cause. There is world changing news, like, like way bigger news than the Maduro situation. Way bigger news than anything that’s happened maybe in like the last half decade,

Simone Collins: but you probably haven’t heard about it.

Malcolm Collins: Not that many people are covering it, and I don’t understand why. So,

Simone Collins: because we’re so obsessed with this little city in the United States called Minneapolis.

Malcolm Collins: I, so for clarification, there was essentially a military coup just happened in China.

Simone Collins: In China, like China,

Malcolm Collins: China, like a ma, the second major power,

Simone Collins: Indianapolis or China,

Malcolm Collins: the heads of the military.

And, and so far of the, the CMC, the committee that. Makes up the military. And I’ll put a picture on screen here. Every single [00:01:00] member of it now, this is, this is the entire top of the Chinese government.

Simone Collins: Oh. We’ve gone to all of them. I, I,

Malcolm Collins: every member, but she and the secret police head, like the guy who’s in charge of Okay.

No,

Simone Collins: that’s why I saw, yeah. There was one

Malcolm Collins: left. Is arrested or killed at this point. And the two last one of these guys who hadn’t been, had a group of military members go and try to abduct g from where he lives, which is a hotel. And there was a firefight and a bunch of people died and they locked down parts of Beijing.

Imagine.

Simone Collins: I bet they just didn’t have the LRADs. If only they had our LRADs

Malcolm Collins: in Washington. The head of our military attempted to abduct Trump, and the next day what we were talking about was some dumb piece of nonsense who got shot by law enforcement because he physically attacked them while carrying a gun.

Right? Like that’s

Speaker: an officer approaches your [00:02:00] car, be polite.

Speaker 2: Is there a

Speaker: problem, officer? And stay in your car with your hands on the wheel.

What the f**k do want motherfucker? Unless you wanna ask this,

Malcolm Collins: right? You know that, that, that video people watching, they’re like, well, they had already gotten the gun. Out of his hands before he had it when he attacked them. Right? Like, well, what do you mean? I understand? Yes, you shouldn’t shoot him after you get the gun outta his hand.

But that’s a heightened situation, okay? These are still human beings, right? If you’re in a conflict with somebody and note they have a gun, even if you successfully think you might have just knocked it out of their hands or didn’t see that, somebody just knocked it out of their hands. You’re, you’re taking fire.

I’m

Simone Collins: sorry. Yeah. I mean, the, the way I look at it is it’s, it, it’s obviously illegal to hit someone who’s crossing the [00:03:00] street like in a crosswalk. Well, and at any point, right? Yeah. But before you cross the street, you should probably look both ways, you know, like, don’t just, just walk blindly into the street.

And I think, you know, obviously. One attacking someone in some kind of, you know, federal position. They’re not law enforcement. They’re, they’re law enforcement officers, okay. Attacking a law enforcement officer and doing so well armed. Like those are sort of two things that you shouldn’t have done.

An ice shooting. We got another ice shooting.

Speaker: here. See, nobody cares.

Simone Collins: So yeah, it’s, it’s one of those, like, this shouldn’t have happened, but but the larger scheme of things though, we are talking about why is anybody talking conflict here versus.

China, China, the, the future of the country the end of a regime possibly. And this is really big.

Malcolm Collins: This is, yeah, this is a complete transformation of how the, the government in China functions and is structured. It’s going to completely change the types of actions that they are likely to carry [00:04:00] out in the future.

It completely aligns with all of my China predictions that

Simone Collins: I had. Well, I need, so I’m, I’ve spent probably three hours watching coverage of this and I still can’t really make heads or tails. There’s a tunnel, there’s an explosion, people are disappearing. Families have been arrested. Individuals. So this please break it down for people even who have been aware of this.

‘cause I think it’s actually quite confusing and I’m having trouble

Malcolm Collins: keeping track it. I’ll separate, then we’ll go into more detail. Okay?

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So the, the, the head of the PLA and then I think the head of the air force. So the two final like heads of the, the all of Chinese armed forces.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Alright.

They have been in a sort of conflict with, xi Xi Jingping for a while at this point. They both really well, wanted to kill each other basically. Now the heads of the army, I do not feel like they started it right. They were maybe against him over consolidating power.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But obviously they’re, they’re worried about this and they’re backed by the Princeling faction.

These [00:05:00] are the people who are the descendants of the people who worked in Mao’s government and various very wealthy people in China. Right. Ma,

Simone Collins: because I, I heard that some are also, they were loyalists to Hu Genal, but not Xi Jinping. And so they,

Malcolm Collins: well, so the PLA guy, like the, the, he was a very senior official because he both had military honors in China.

Okay. Because he served in actual combat, which was a long time ago. So not a lot of people have combat medals. And he was the descendant, the son of the head of Mao’s personal bodyguard force. So he’s, oh,

Simone Collins: wow. So this is going way, way back to OG. Leaders,

Malcolm Collins: not previous administration. Basically all the, the cred connections, everything like that you could need if you were going to try an overthrow.

Right.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So anyway Xi tries to have this guy killed, right? So he he has the, so she was the,

Simone Collins: was the aggressor in this case. He

Malcolm Collins: started it then in years, so, yeah. So he has this guy’s secretary killed or one of the high level general guys killed. We’ll get to it in a second. Died mysteriously.

Okay. Then this guy has an [00:06:00] assassination attempt on him. And it looks like the United States may have helped him avoid that assassination attempt. Mm-hmm. This is when he was on a, a, a trip. And so obviously, you know, he’s like, I just have to do it now or not. Right. Then there’s this giant explosion in a tunnel,

Simone Collins: okay.

Malcolm Collins: That blew up a car and what we know about this car. This was last month. And if you’re like, I didn’t know any of this stuff, like. This is because the, the slop storm that you are in is keeping you from the important information about how the world is functioning right now. A car that had Xi Jinping’s body double blew up in that tunnel.

And the explosion, like was really under reported on in Chinese media. So we know that there was something like weird going on with it and they were trying to cover it up. So, then the two remaining guys, because he’s been doing sweeps of all of these other guys recently, like the reason you got all these exes on this picture is because he is been getting rid of everyone.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: , So where are we here? Okay. So they, they’re like, oh my God, I’m gonna be killed. I’m gonna be killed. I’m gonna be killed. [00:07:00] So what do I do next? Let’s get together and organize a capture of Xi Jinping.

So they try to corner him in because he, he moves between residences and one of the places he stays, he is a hotel that’s just for like CCP officials.

Oh.

Malcolm Collins: So they do this raid on the hotel. With their military forces to attempt to arrest him. And they had already started to put out the PR about this, like how they were gonna frame it which is like, we’re doing this to save China, to save the ccp like she is no longer.

And a lot of people could feel that way. I mean, he was definitely going in a, a, a direction that a lot of people didn’t like. Sure. It was the future of the country in, in this consolidation. And this matter if you wipe out, because I’d had a debate with somebody, and I’ve said for a long time, China is screwed.

China does not have a future. And this is where I most frequently get into debates with like the hardest core like alignment people we have. This has always been my biggest debate with,

Simone Collins: we’ve got a lot of China stands. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like a lot of people like really

Simone Collins: [00:08:00] just, well, not even like I, there’s a world in which I, I very much care about China and its people.

It’s not that I don’t care about China or don’t like China, and they do, they just somehow believe that China is. Is miraculously shielded from the effects of demographic collapse and, and not, not undermine in terms of its sovereignty. In terms of energy and food independence. Like, I, I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: The problem is China, it’s, even if China didn’t have its current demographics, it would still be Ed.

Like their, their water situation is terrible. Their geographic security situation is terrible. Their

Simone Collins: food security. Yeah. The, the amount of food and energy that they import is, is quite high, including I think some like minerals for fertilizer. Watch,

Malcolm Collins: When you guys, so, okay. I’ll quickly explain why they’re so screwed.

You can watch your video on the feature of East Asia where we go into this. But essentially if China gets in a conflict and the strait of, of [00:09:00] Malacca is blockaded. Okay. China will not be able to get, and, and keep in mind to get its oil.

China imports something like 83% of its oil. Mm-hmm. And 86% of that 83% is coming from the Middle East. So that means that oil is coming on tankers through the Suez Canal going past India who hates China’s guts.

And then if you block a malaka it has to go around Australia who would also be anti-China in one of these situations. And then try to get through I mean this is even assuming that they have Taiwan at this point. Right. Which, which, you know. Unlikely that they’ll capture that, and we’ll get to that in a second.

It’s just, it’s just comical. They’re not gonna be able to get their oil and they’re, they’re, they don’t even produce enough food themselves. Not even close. They’re not like the United States. The United States produces tons of food. Tons of oil. We’re fine. You even if you could blockade us, which you can’t.

And, and then you’ve got the problem of, okay, so, so, so you’ve got all of that. But even though they’re importing all this food, [00:10:00] they would be making even less of their own food because they also import their fertilizer.

Simone Collins: That, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: China is just a comically cocked country. If a war does break out they, they, they, it would be one of the, it would be suicide.

It would be more suicidal than what Russia is doing right now. And, and you, you could point this out to people, you’d feel like this would be horrifying for them. And, and it’s not just that. So like, suppose they avoid war, which seems less likely now. We’ll get to why in a second. And they, they just ride this out.

Well, their demographics are terrible. A lot of their ais are basically faked. Well, what was the last interesting thing from China’s deeps seek, and I, I hate the deeps seek ai model for anyone who’s actually used it. It’s not a good model. Like ral from France is more interesting to me than deeps seek.

I actually am a big mytral stand. I’m, I’m, that’s

Simone Collins: saying a lot because Malcolm cannot stand France.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. After, after grok. I think it is for me the most useful AI model because it’s [00:11:00] both almost as smart as the mainstream models, but also extremely not safe for work tolerant. So it, it really doesn’t break on anything during stories.

I know this for my work was reality fabricator and putting together all that. So r fab.ai, if you wanna check out chat bots. But anyway, so, even if all those things weren’t the case, its entire economy is a house of cards built on a real estate bubble, which is already popped, right? Like, and that house of cards has only been righted.

‘cause a lot of people are like, oh, you know, the real estate bubble popped. Why hasn’t China collapsed? And it’s because the government basically optically shifted where their economy was to like the tech sector. But we actually actually seen the growth in the tech sector that you would need to justify this offset.

So. Comically effed country. And I, I I just mean it like comical levels. And their one hope, when I argue is the China stands. And I always point out, ‘cause I’m like, well, they would need to change X, Y, and Z, right? Yeah. And they’ll say, [00:12:00] well, they’ll do that. And I’m like, then why aren’t they doing that right now?

And they’re like, well, we will get somebody other than G in power eventually, right? And I’m like, no, you won’t because G has gutted the government of everyone competent. And they’ve always said to me, and this is why you watch this channel. ‘cause hopefully I, I, I predict things well, geopolitically, right?

They say to me, oh, Malcolm. Oh Malcolm. There’s still some competent people left. He’s hasn’t gutted everyone competent from the government. Now that’s beginning. In force because this was the final, like he has admitted this to the public. This was published in the, the mainstream Chinese news that these two individuals were traitors.

Now this has never done immediately when you’re taking out traitors like this, it’s always slow. This is basically just a declare of war, and they’ve basically just been arresting anyone with power in the country. Now and you saw this earlier was oh, what, what was his name? The, the famous, like the Elon of China. They take out Jack Ma. And you know, now he’s, he’s you [00:13:00] know, cued and can’t say anything and basically under house arrest just to make sure that everybody in China knows no matter who you are, no matter how much money you have, we still control you.

And now no one. No one can speak back. Even, you know, Jackie Chan, who’s famously like a Stan of China has said some stuff recently where he seems to be implying that one of his friends, another actor who did a lot of like charity work and stuff like that may have been taken out from the CCP simply because his charity work made them look bad.

And he implied that he, he thought that as well, right? Like mm-hmm. Because if you admit that there’s poor people in the country, well, the government says there’s not poor people. So if you’re doing charity work, you’re, you’re arguing that the government hasn’t solved poverty, they haven’t solved starvation.

Why are you filming this? Why are you showing this? Right? So, the, there, the, the China stands pushback has always been, there’s still competent people left in the government. Somebody will still take over, other than Xi a situation like this is just putting China on the pathway to be the next Venezuela.

Mm-hmm. Because what [00:14:00] would, and, and, and it, it justifiably does, this is why Autocracies are so bad. But I, I, I guess I’m gonna get to the point of this before I get into the details of this. Autocracy always ends in this scenario. This is why Nick Fuentes idea about how the United States should be run is objectively stupid.

And it’s why when people come out there and they say something like, we just need a king. We just need a monarchy. And I’m, and I’m sorry to Curtis Irving about this, because I, we like Curtis Irving, you know, we’ve had him on the show. That’s stupid. Because it leads to this always when you centralize power around a single individual, that individual’s best interest is served, IE maintaining that power because they’re gonna make mistakes sometimes, right?

Or things that undermine their rule. Like a lot of mandate of heaven things, A lot of major cities have been flooding and stuff in China recently. You know, that gives people the opportunity to, historically it was emperors when there’s natural disasters that mean they need to be replaced. Well. Oh my God, they may wanna replace me.

Right. [00:15:00] So then what do you think? You think, well, the last thing I want is anyone who’s an obvious choice to replace me left in the country. Yeah. Right. Like if, if, if you get scared like that. Right. And this, this is, this is the instate of all autocratic regimes. The reasons why monarchies worked in a historic context is because the people that could replace you, even during a coup were small.

Mm-hmm. There were very explicit rules. Like even when people were couping against the king, you needed to have somebody who had a plausible. Claim to the throne for the coup to be accepted. Like you just wouldn’t do a coup if you didn’t have anyone, because then what they would say is, well, then just everyone will do coups.

And it could just be an endless cycle of coups. Right? Which they’re right about. That’s like even back in the days of the old monarchies, they understood why you couldn’t have a non-traditional monarchy. If you, if you have a monarchy, you need a royal family. And it’s, it, it doesn’t, like in [00:16:00] Rome where they tried to do it by like choosing the next emperor at various times that never worked for more than a couple generations, right?

Like, and, and we see this from ancient Rome. It’s what ultimately led to the collapse of ancient Rome. Right? So if you’re doing a monarchy, you actually need it to be a hereditary monarchy with strict rules about hereditary procession. But that is not gonna be easy to set up within a modern context.

And, and a hereditary monarchy basically doesn’t count until it’s been hereditary for like two to three generations. You need somebody with, well, Simone would have claim to the throne. Right. You know, the descendant of George Washington’s siblings to two fold over. And he didn’t have any kids himself.

So, you know, if we’re offering King George got King Simone here, queen Simone, I think a lot of people would be down with that. You, you seem like the more even headed of the two of us.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But everyone would know that you’re driving all my choices. So it’s a two for one. All the better.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, em for em for Elia, em for Simone.

But the point being is, is this is everyone was like, oh, China is more ordered. Like the government can just make decisions and force everyone [00:17:00] to follow them. Right. And you have me in the background being like, that form of government is intrinsically unstable. It’s not going to last. Mm-hmm. You cannot do things that way.

If you attempt to, you end up with power centralizing and fewer, fewer competent people at the higher rings of power. Also, you get more corruption because you run into the secondary problem, which is now you have a bunch of dumb people around you. Okay? Which you’ve got the second issue, right? Which is you’ve gotta give these dumb people incrementally more money than they had before, right?

Like, that’s how you keep them loyal to you, because people forget to be grateful for alone because, okay, so one of the dumb guys goes to all the other four or five dumb guys, right? Who ha have a ton of power now. And he says, Hey, you helped put me in power and I’ll get you more stuff than you have right now.

Right now. Now why not put him in power, right? Mm-hmm. And so how do you prevent that if you’re number one guy? The way you prevent that, if you’re number one guy, is [00:18:00] you be like, I’ve given you literally as much as the state can afford to give you. I have, I have already maximized the corruption. I, I, you know, the, the, the other three guys are like, Hey, we can take more from the people and give it to you.

You know, nepotistic bureaucrats, and, and if that sounds plausible, then you’re at risk of a coup. But if somebody comes to you and says that, and they’re like, no, no, no, no, you really couldn’t bleed these people for anything more. Like he’s already, she’s already maxed the corruption of this, this bad boy.

Then there’s no reason to do the coup. And, and that’s basically where China is right now as a state. It’s already, we have ma and if you look at the debauchery, that the heads of these, these groups, you know, they always have their mistresses. They always have their you know, horrible, horrible scandals.

Their kids basically.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We discussed the Mistress Villages in another episode. I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s wild. Like there are entire districts known for hosting the apartments of, of the women, the kept women. Of CCP [00:19:00] officials.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and this is why people don’t wanna breed there. You know, she goes around and she says, what’s Putin?

They were talking and they were talking joyfully about how well, you know, as medical advances today, people are gonna live to 150, and everyone here knows they don’t mean normal Chinese people are gonna be live to 150. They mean this entrenched bureaucratic class is going to harvest the organs, which is a major problem in China right now.

From citizens and, and kids. Disappearing is a major issue in China right now. Under extremely mysterious circumstances. Schools covering it up, kids just like quote unquote dying in their, in their classrooms or, or in their dorms. And then their bodies disappear. You mean

Simone Collins: college students? What?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like a regular thing in China. There’s been a lot of,

Simone Collins: yeah, because presumably CCP officials want young kids origins or, or young adults, organs.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And they can do it. And there’s pretty much nothing you can do. I mean, the stories are really horrifying. Like the parents have tried to even like, look at the bodies and stuff like that, [00:20:00] and the CCP won’t release them.

So I decided to do some follow up on this story and it, it has a fun and happy ending when a lawyer hired by the family attempted to conduct an independent investigation into the school. Official personnel smashed his phone and wiped his account data, according to reports with later reported that the victim’s family could no longer be contact.

A parent identified as Zu Lou wrote online. The family can’t be found anymore. The videos are gone. Anything posted from Henan is either throttled or taken down directly. Accounts are disabled. We are treated like weeds. We speak out, so they know that even a blade of grass has a temper. Parents in Henan are still watching, so the family disappeared.

Great.

Malcolm Collins: So, yeah, I mean they’re, they’re basically debauchery, maxing their society. And I think that’s one of the core reasons why nobody wants to breed, because they know that through breeding, they’re just supporting this broken system. And the only way that you can be safe against the system, and this was shown in [00:21:00] COVID.

There was a viral, viral video in China where officers that were trying to enforce the, you know, insane zero COVID policy were talking to each other and the, somebody, somebody watched them talk to each other and recorded it and they said, how do we get this, this guy to do what we want him to?

And they go, oh, his son, that’s his weakness. That that’s our leverage. Right? And everyone realized that’s the way the government sees your kids. As soon as you have them, as a way to manipulate you further. Right? And, and, and beyond that, just a resource for the ultra wealthy. And so it leads to this debauchery maxing at the, at the core of the elite within Chinese society.

And unfortunately it, it’s, it’s known by the average person now, and nobody wants to, you know, that, that’s, that’s where they’re, they’re pulling the line. But let’s get into the details of this. Any, any thoughts before I do Simone?

Simone Collins: No, that’s just, I mean, on, on that front though, one thing I do worry about, we’re already dealing with what it’s like to [00:22:00] be ruled by a gerontocracy around the world.

When you look at most world governments, the, the people in them, the legislators and the other leaders are tremendously old. And the problem is, when it comes to life extension, whether or not there’s illegal, horrific organ horrors harvesting. Life extension, especially when we’re talking about 80 plus years old, is just going to be a rich person thing.

It’s not an every person thing. You know, Brian Johnson can do, don’t die because he has insane amounts of money. Right. And, and that it just worries me that not only are only the wealthy really going to access crazy levels of life extension, but they’re also going to maintain an iron grip on power and just try to accumulate more for themselves and even further ossify terrible bureaucratic systems that are tearing the rest of us apart, which really just makes me so sad.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay, so. The Central Military Commission. The [00:23:00] CMC is the highest military leadership body in China. It serves the command authority over the People’s Liberation Army, PLA, which includes the Army, Navy, air Force, rocket Force, strategic support forces, as well as the people’s Armed police and militia.

Simone Collins: Is, is there a rocket force like our Space Force?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. In practice of CMC is the top decision making organ for all military strategy, operations, personnel, appointments, budgets and policy. Mm. So this literally runs everything. Right. And that’s where this picture comes from, where there’s only two people left.

The guy who’s in charge of arresting high profile people was in the organization. And she, himself and this other guy, we’ll go into a bit about him. He came outta nowhere. He’s, he’s like a new guy. He’s not like some, some all of the, all of the legacy people in this org had been taken out.

Simone Collins: Yikes.

Malcolm Collins: Which is wild. This is a complete restructuring of the, of the Chinese government. To continue here in mid-January 2026, the top [00:24:00] two operational leaders of the People’s Liberation Army, vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, zing, Yahweh, and Chief of the Joint Staff Department, Lou and Lee.

Tim to the coup against Xi Jinping On January 18th, they moved forces to the Jing Z Hotel in Beijing, intended to capture or neutralize g dur during what they framed internally as a save the party and save the country. The plan leaked roughly two hours before execution. Only two hours before execution.

Xi was quietly evacuated, countermeasures were ordered, and a gunfight broke out. When Zane’s troops arrived, nine of Xi’s personal guards and dozens of attackers were killed. Immediately afterward, Zang Lu and their families, secretaries and a number of close associates were all arrested. Wow. And neither of them had moved their families outta the country because they thought one, that they were gonna win.

And two that would’ve alerted, gee, who is watching all of them incredibly closely.

Simone Collins: Right? Yeah. It would’ve been a dead giveaway if their families [00:25:00] suddenly started heading out to non extradition countries.

Malcolm Collins: But now ev everyone in their family is gone, right? Mm-hmm. And keep in mind that this was the head of the Princeling faction in China, like the rich person faction.

So if you’re a wealthy person in China right now, everything you’re thinking about is how do I get my money and myself outta the country? Every competent person in China is thinking about this right now. And if they’re not, they’re not that competent or they are overconfident in their ability to play the system.

Because things only go down uphill from here. When, when, when, when something like this happens, right? This is terrible news for the people of China. If the coup had worked, it would’ve been fairly good news. Things could have gotten back on track. Some sanity to the way the government was organized, could have been restored.

Yeah. And these two were both. The other thing that’s important about the purges is they removed all the heads of the military command. And a lot of them, especially one of these guys, which we’ll get into in a second, was really against attacking Taiwan [00:26:00] because he said we’re, oh,

Simone Collins: see, I thought that this meant that basically their military would be on like, oh, I guess we have to rethink everything mode and not, okay, let’s go for Taiwan.

But you’re saying maybe one of the few people holding China back on TA Taiwan is now gone removing a major impediment to potential. Well, I

Malcolm Collins: mean, the question is, is why did they need to remove literally everyone who was a highly experienced person in the military? Every highly experienced individual in the military had to be removed.

Why, why is it that everyone was actual warfare scenario had to be removed? And the answer is. It’s because those were the people saying this plan is unrealistic. Mm-hmm. And so it means that what we might be about to see is a horrifyingly stupid move on China’s part. And a move that the AI safety crowd is probably salivating for because it executed.

And if Taiwan has knocked off, they make 85% of the high-end semiconductors on, on Earth, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So that’s gonna set back [00:27:00] AI a decade.

Simone Collins: I still would be completely shocked if Taiwan was invaded because I mean, just so many factors. It, it just doesn’t, it, China has a lot going on right now.

Engaging in military conflict with, with Taiwan is the last thing they need at this time. I would be shocked if in the next two years, Taiwan were invaded and I would need to reevaluate after that. But I, I, I could even see just Taiwan. Well,

Malcolm Collins: basically

Simone Collins: like five plus years. Taiwan being totally fine.

Malcolm Collins: Only a crazy person would attempt to evade Taiwan at this

Simone Collins: point.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The problem is, is

Simone Collins: that you’re just saying she is crazy.

Malcolm Collins: It’s kind of a crazy person. And on top of that,

Simone Collins: you, no, you just went on this long rant explaining, and I’m not saying rant, crazy rant, and I’m saying logical rant, explaining to people why he’s acting entirely logically. Right. But’s be position He’s backed into a corner.

Malcolm Collins: So what you Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s also logical for Xi to attack Taiwan. It’s not logical for China to attack Taiwan. What I mean by this is China would get their butts handed to [00:28:00] them. Hundreds of millions of people would likely die of starvation. The, the Oh, because

Simone Collins: of blockades and stuff.

Malcolm Collins: Because of blockades and stuff. Yeah. Oh boy. That and blackouts and, and you know, not being able to move water. It would be one of the worst human rights tragedies our planet has seen since the last time China did something.

Um,

Simone Collins: And really I did not, I, that had not even occurred to me. I don’t know.

It seems like. I didn’t hear about there being humanitarian crises in Russia due to all the blockades. Do you really think that that would be the case? China has, has spent years and years with the Belt and Road Initiative trying to shore up its supply chains. So I don’t imagine it would be a humanitarian crisis to the scale that you

Malcolm Collins: No,

Simone Collins: no, no, no.

Russia didn’t invest, Russia has not invested anywhere close to the amount that China has in shoring up. Its, its supply

Malcolm Collins: chain. The Belt and Road initiative mostly turned into a scheme for Chinese officials to just get money out of the country. You know, the, the, the reality is that there was a lot of buying toilet seats for a million dollars.

Right. Like, if you, if you actually look at the durable [00:29:00] alliances, they have quote unquote built with this, they are not anywhere that is actually useful to China. Mm-hmm. Who did, who did they need to get to, like them with the Belt and Road Initiative most if they were gonna make this happen? Right.

Well, the players that they could potentially still win over were. Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos and the Philippines. And all of these people hate them so much more now than they did historically because of just stupid after stupid, after stupid decision that China made. And they’re all pushed closer to the United States.

The only person that they may arguably have closer ties with now than historically is South Korea. But even in the case of South Korea if China goes to military conflict, south Korea’s not sitting that one out. Right? Like, they, they

Simone Collins: neither is Japan. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: no, Japan is excited for this at this point.

Japan wants to be, Japan isn’t like Germany. Okay,

Simone Collins: well, they gotta take that nice [00:30:00] naval fleet for a little spin, you know? What have they been able to do aside from. Move their boats in threatening locations.

Malcolm Collins: Germany got cued by World War ii and now they enjoy cing themselves. They would not. Japan has, since World War II been dying for a chance to regain their

Simone Collins: military.

Well, it hasn’t. Their, their, their newest prime minister, the new Margaret Thatcher of, of Japan. The successor to Shinzo Abe is. Isn’t she investing more in, what is it called? The Yes, more in the military public defense.

Malcolm Collins: And their, their military is pretty good. Like their navy is pretty solid. And it’s important, not only that, but their technology is pretty solid as well.

Ke keep in mind you know, if, if you’re going to an AI war or a drone war, having Japan and South Korea on your side is a pretty useful thing to have. Now

no

Simone Collins: me favor.

Malcolm Collins: The, the, the what the reason I was saying Xi may still do it is okay, [00:31:00] so China is increasingly hostile. They are dealing with an economic collapse.

It’s all blamed on she there isn’t anyone else to point the blame at anymore because there’s no one else to say is corrupt and kick it outta of the government. Right? And

Simone Collins: so now that is the problem of getting rid of all the other leadership, although it, I I wanted to actually ask about this. Is it just the military leadership?

I mean, there are many other facets of CCP governance, surely. Those are not disrupted and everything else is normal. Well, there’s

Malcolm Collins: been arrests throughout those. The military is just the most extreme example.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Okay. So, so, okay.

Malcolm Collins: If you saying here so if you so if you’re in, she’s position here, right?

Like you’re trying to control, consolidate power.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: You say, okay, the economy’s failing. Everyone’s blaming me. Or I know the economy’s about to start failing, and everyone will start blaming me, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So what do you do to avoid that? You attack Taiwan?

Simone Collins: Oh no. ‘

Malcolm Collins: cause then you say, well, the economy’s failing because of the blockades.

The [00:32:00] economy’s failing.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Or we, we, we can’t do elections right now. We have to shut down all political processes. Yep. ‘cause we’re in a state of emergency. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: no one’s even going to, like, the international community isn’t even going to care if he starts assassinating top officials during a sea on Taiwan.

Right. Like, they’re only gonna care about the Taiwan thing. Right. Basically it gives him car blanche a a anyone who’s been involved in a protest now just execution time. Right. Like it gives him the excuse for mass executions. It gives him the excuse for mass arrest. It gives him an explanation for why the economy is failing.

It gives him a nationalist push with the citizen body. It is a smart thing to do at a him level. Now it would cause a human rights catastrophe. Many times within Central China, it would be the death nail of China. In the same way Russia’s attack on the Ukraine was the death nail of Russia. Mm-hmm. Many times worse than the Holocaust.

It would be Holocaust in his own people essentially. I, I’m talking in terms of sheer numbers but like, what do you do? And, and the other thing I note here [00:33:00] is this is not necessarily good for us before I go further on this. One point I wanted to make about China, which some people often forget about China, is the CCP has been a fairly good enemy for the United States to have as our core political opponent.

Yeah. Before them we were dealing with the Soviet Union and that was constant, like cold wars, like actual wars, like, you know, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, you know, just constantly this stuff. Right. China doesn’t get us involved in that nonsense. Right. Before that it was the Nazis. Right. We had to actually fight them.

That sucked. I don’t wanna do that nonsense again.

And note here, I don’t want to downplay how much you know, the whole fentanyl thing sucks that they’re flooding our country. Whi, how much the TikTok thing sucks. They’re flooding our country, whi. But these things are infinitely better than like a Vietnam war or a World War ii.

Malcolm Collins: Like, and I pointed out now that I think that the [00:34:00] next multipolar world is gonna be the United States and Israel. Because Europe is obviously collapsing as a power center and has their the AI bans and their low fertility rates. So the only place where you see decent fertility rates other than the United States and good AI technology is Israel.

And, and they show a lot of potential for dynamism. They can pretty much expand wherever they want with the region. ‘cause there’s nowhere around them boxing them in. As soon as Europe is done, cocking them you know, what is it? Territory acquisition, block blocking them cock blocking them. Because that’s, that’s, I mean, that’s the, they would just expand if they could.

And, and so Israel is in a position where we’re the next world. Weights is gonna likely be the United States and Israel. Can we stay allies when we’re the two top powers? I think it’s unlikely. Like we’ll be able to be more friendly in the same way that like we’ve moved to a friendlier stance with every Nazis to communist, to China to CCP.

I think we’ll move yet again, friendlier with Israel. But that’s gonna be a very, that’s a whole [00:35:00] other lecture going into, but he has a reason to do it. Okay. Now to continue here. And the, and the military leaders who would’ve said no to this, they had a reason to say no. Like, we can’t win. What do you mean he may not care about winning?

Right. That, that may not be the point. So a few days later on January 23rd, China’s. Ministry of National Defense publicly confirmed the arrest of Zang Udan in Louise Lin for serious violations of discipline and law. A rare harshly worded editorial from the PLA daily directly claim. Both men accused them of betraying G’S trust under minding CMC authority, shattering military uniting and damaging the political system and combat readiness.

This was the fastest public condemnation ever for such a high level PLA arrest.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Now note here that the condemnation was interesting because it was published as an editorial written by a newspaper that didn’t publish it. Like they sent it to another newspaper that then published it, but they didn’t publish anything about this event.

And then [00:36:00] the newspaper that published it redacted it. Not redacted it, but it just disappeared from their wed link. And I think it’s back up now, but basically what we’re skiing there is there is. An internal power struggle right now. Like some people are like, Hey, we don’t know that this has played out yet.

These guys might end up getting out. Like, we don’t wanna end up on their bad side. Like what happens with the, so what we’re seeing is. People in China are like, God, I don’t, I don’t know what to do next. Right? Like,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Is, is there gonna be an actual full scale co? My, my answer is probably not. Xi has taken out what he can because China is so hierarchical, you cut the head off a snake, you stop the snake.

So, this is bad for anyone who’s hoping for a coup in China.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: The coup failed and triggered sweeping emergency measures across the PLA. The general staff department with effectively suspended operational control shifted to direct encrypted telegrams from the CMC, and the entire force was placed on level one combat readiness.

Now, keep in mind, direct encrypted telegrams to the [00:37:00] CMC. The CMC is now just she and the head of police, right? Like,

Simone Collins: well, I’m sure their meetings are a lot more efficient now. So there’s that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, true movements were frozen, personal mobile phones were collected for inspection. So God knows if you got any, any email about any of this, any text about any of this.

And mass political study sessions have been ordered. These steps treated the military itself as potentially an internal threat and significantly raise the risk of mutiny from the lower ranks. Mm-hmm. Either basically saying all of you, you know, we might be coming for you next and not now.

That’s what every low level person is debating everyone who’s thinking of mutiny. Do I try to do something now before I’m taken, but do I even have the operational capacity to do something now? Right. Like you need the whole military to be on board and that’s harder to do with the heads of the military under arrest.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yikes.

Malcolm Collins: So, for the other information you heard about during the November December trip to Moscow, Jang Wong reportedly survived an assassination [00:38:00] attempt. And this is the one that the United States possibly warned him about and helped him out of. Shortly after returning from Russia, the PLA Air Force Commander died under unclear circumstances.

So this is the guy, that guy who was secretary, probably murdered and an explosion in Beijing Tunnel killed a man and described as inner circles or rumors as being she’s body double along with several bodyguards. Now, note when we talk about China and rumors, it’s hard to get anything exact.

Yeah. But the same people who were saying these rumors were right about this attempted coup before any mainstream source claimed that this was an attempted coup, which makes me think that they were right on this stuff as well. Basically documenting this inner war that’s been happening in China.

Hmm. In terms of what’s going on in China right now, power outages are hitting parts of Beijing. There are armored vehicles on the streets. Dissident sources warn people to avoid Chong Avenue because of possible remnant counter moves by loyalists. The arrests were overseen by [00:39:00] Kai Qui, head of the Central Security Borough in Wang, Z’s ninth Bureau.

And an open letter began circulating online openly accusing Xi of tyranny, economic plunder in isolating China while calling on military officers and the public to revolt against him and the Polita Boroughs standing committee. So, broader impact on the PLA and its leadership right now. The purge.

Has left the central military command, gutted only. She and Vice chairman, he won Don remain as full CMC members four theater level. Full generals are left standing. Dozens of senior officers have been removed over the past year, including most of the previous Eastern Theater Command leadership responsible for the Taiwan contingencies.

The Easter Theater itself has been on an internal cleanup since September, 2025 with the new acting commanders focus on rooting out influence from the SAC previous leaders rather than preparing for actual operations. [00:40:00] Mm-hmm. So to, to note here if you’re like, where am I reading this from?

Basically everything that I found on this is way too wordy. Like Lay’s Wheel Real Talk has about four videos on this event. I found them to be the best sources. So she’s

Simone Collins: great. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: She is good, but she talks so slowly. And she goes way too much into detail about some things that I just don’t care about.

So I took transcripts of her videos and I put them into ai. And I summarized t