The month from 24 May to 24 June 2026 underscored the continuity of governance under Xi Jinping even as questions briefly surfaced about his own visibility; state media did not report a May Politburo meeting, and Xi was absent from public view for several days in late May–early June before resurfacing on a state visit to North Korea (8–9 June). Across the political domain, the anti-corruption campaign maintained its high-pressure tempo, claiming a leading Chinese cartographic scientist (Zhou Chenghu, CCDI notice 1 June) and culminating in the expulsion of former Shenzhen CPPCC chief Dai Beifang (22 June), while the State Council pressed ahead with 15th Five-Year Plan implementation through executive meetings on employment, education and “Beautiful China.” Society was jolted by China’s deadliest mining disaster in over a decade, the Liushenyu coal-mine gas explosion in Shanxi (22 May, 82 dead). On the military front, the PLA combined visible power projection (the Liaoning carrier strike group’s 40-day Western Pacific deployment, the Fujian’s third Taiwan Strait transit) with active defence diplomacy (the China-Mongolia “Steppe Partner 2026” exercise and China’s chairing of the SCO Defence Ministers’ Meeting). In science and technology, China sustained an intense launch cadence toward its Guowang and Qianfan mega-constellations, launched the Shenzhou-23 crew (including Hong Kong’s first astronaut), announced mass production of ultrapure silicon-28 for quantum chips, and installed the world’s largest single-unit floating wind turbine. The cumulative picture is of a party-state projecting confidence and technological momentum while managing domestic safety, governance, and successionrelated vulnerabilities.
