The Chinese State
How the People's Republic is actually run, as of October 2026: the principle that the Party leads everything, its pyramid and its departments, Xi and the commissions he chairs, the state and its legislature, the provinces and counties after the land boom, the security state and the discipline system, the army and the purges that emptied its high command, the economy's supply-led model, the law and the periphery from Xinjiang to Hong Kong, the social contract, and foreign policy from the summits with Washington to Taiwan. Brought to October: the Fourth Plenum and the 15th Five-Year Plan, the expulsions that left three Politburo seats and five of the military commission's seven empty, the Busan truce extended to January, the year's summits with Trump, and the Fifth Plenum due on October 26-29. Where the system is argued over, from whether Xi's centralization is a remedy or a risk to whether China seeks to displace the American-led order, each side makes its case before the evidence. Three worked examples: reading a plenum communiqué, a county's budget, and how a slogan becomes a campaign. Opens with the officeholders, with their ages and years in office, and a Who's Who.