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As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prepares to convene the Fifth Plenum of its 20th Central Committee, rumors about personnel changes at the top are once again sweeping through overseas Chinese-language circles. One of the most outlandish claims is that Premier Li Qiang, the formal second-in-command, has already been designated as Xi Jinping’s successor and will even replace him as party general secretary at the upcoming meeting. Before last year’s Fourth Plenum, it was Cai Qi, another member of the Politburo Standing Committee, who was rumored to be Xi’s successor.

Neither claim is credible. Yet taken together, these rumors inadvertently reveal something fundamental about the workings of Chinese elite politics: Xi relies heavily on Li and Cai, his two most important lieutenants, to sustain his rule.

As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prepares to convene the Fifth Plenum of its 20th Central Committee, rumors about personnel changes at the top are once again sweeping through overseas Chinese-language circles. One of the most outlandish claims is that Premier Li Qiang, the formal second-in-command, has already been designated as Xi Jinping’s successor and will even replace him as party general secretary at the upcoming meeting. Before last year’s Fourth Plenum, it was Cai Qi, another member of the Politburo Standing Committee, who was rumored to be Xi’s successor.

Neither claim is credible. Yet taken together, these rumors inadvertently reveal something fundamental about the workings of Chinese elite politics: Xi relies heavily on Li and Cai, his two most important lieutenants, to sustain his rule.

Understanding Chinese elite politics requires identifying the relationships that determine how power operates, rather than obsessing over supposed clues in every meeting or photograph. One reason outside observers have repeatedly misjudged Xi’s rule is that they have become lost in the fog of power struggles, imagining Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound, as a place perpetually on the verge of a palace coup while overlooking how the system functions on a daily basis.

However much power Xi has concentrated in his own hands, he cannot personally manage the enormous machinery of the Chinese state, or the vast CCP itself. He needs lieutenants. Within the 20th Politburo, Li and Cai are his two most indispensable aides—one overseeing government affairs, the other party affairs. Together, they constitute what I call the “central gang of three” that defines elite politics in the Xi era.

By “gang of three,” I don’t mean to suggest that the three constitute a faction akin to the notorious Gang of Four of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the gaggle of revolutionary leaders who were later blamed for the disasters of the period. Rather, this is a framework for understanding power. Zhou Enlai, the first premier of the People’s Republic of China,........

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