Xi Jinping’s Quietest Signals

What language and silence reveal about China’s new era of State power

Xi Jinping’s rhetoric has grown markedly more declarative and self-assured. At the same time, China’s formal institutions, once essential channels for internal debate, constraint, and succession, have been hollowed out by a single centralized leader. These two dynamics reinforce each other, heightening the risk of strategic miscalculation, particularly in cross-Strait policy where both uncertainty and ambition are growing.

A New Rhetorical Posture: From Uncertainty to Triumphalism

China’s political trajectory in late 2025 is illuminated by two very different signals: one rhetorical, one institutional that together map a deeper shift in how power is exercised in Beijing.

On the rhetorical front, The Economist’s computational analysis of more than 14,000 of Xi Jinping’s speeches since 2012 shows a leader whose language has grown increasingly declarative, triumphalist, and insulated from uncertainty. Terms such as “strong country” now appear in roughly a quarter of Xi’s speeches, more than triple the frequency of a decade ago, while words denoting difficulty or ambiguity or deliberation (“problems,” “opinions,” “understand”) have declined sharply.

This is signals a leadership that believes it has arrived at a phase of consolidation, not adaptation. China no longer sees itself as struggling to catch up with global norms; it now speaks as a power intent on shaping them. The implications spill into the geo-economic domain as well: a China that portrays rejuvenation as close to completion is a China more likely to pursue technological self-reliance, dominance in critical supply chains, and coercive leverage over regional economies. Confidence in speech often precedes confidence in action.

Institutional Silence: Forms are Preserved While Power Moves Elsewhere

Yet this rhetorical ascent occurs alongside an institutional quiet that is even more revealing. The 2025 Fourth Plenum’s most remarkable feature was what was left unsaid. Politburo vacancies were left unfilled, not because Xi was prevented from promoting loyalists, but because the Politburo has ceased to matter..

The Chinese Communist Party’s traditional machinery of elite rotation, designed to balance factions, test policies, and signal succession, has withered into pure formality. Real decisionmaking has long since shifted to tightly controlled bodies such as the National Security Commission and the various leading groups that operate directly around Xi.

The military offers an even more striking break from precedent. General Zhang Shengmin’s elevation to vice chairman of the Central Military Commission without the customary Politburo seat is a signal. It reflects a transition away from military representation and toward military supervision. Zhang is a career inspection disciplinarian, not a battlefield general. His rise suggests that Xi sees the People’s Liberation Army not as an institution to empower, but a potential vulnerability to be monitored and controlled.

This rearrangement reveals a governance model in which formal structures remain visible but are hollow, kept alive for symbolism rather than substance. It also exposes a deeper systemic tension. As the circle of narrows, the top leader’s information environment becomes thinner and more filtered, raising the risk of misjudgment and strategic overconfidence in both foreign policy and economic planning.

Domestic Power Consolidation Drives External Assertiveness

These internal dynamics inevitably shape China’s behavior abroad and its economic posture toward the region. A leadership that speaks with increasing certainty while relying on a shrinking circle of advisers tends to project confidence outward even when fundamental weaknesses such as:

• Slowing productivity

• Persistent capital outflows

• Economic decoupling

• Persistent military corruption

• Long-term demographic contraction

• Structural headwinds in industry and property

• Ongoing US technology restrictions

Taiwan: The Most Dangerous Expression of Overconfidence

This tension is especially apparent in cross-Strait policy. Beijing increasingly presents unification not as a distant goal, but as an historical trajectory that is already set in motion. Yet the economic instruments that once gave China leverage over Taiwan, including market access, supply chain integration, and tourism flows, are far less potent today than they were a decade ago. Taiwan has diversified its economic ties, deepened security cooperation with the U.S. and Japan, and grown more resistant to political integration with the Mainland.

Compounding this uncertainty is the political posture of the Kuomintang’s new chair, Cheng Li-wen. She has not yet clarified whether the party will move toward endorsing a formal reunification framework or simply emphasize cultural affinity. That ambiguity once gave the party tactical space. Now, as Beijing’s patience thins and its rhetoric grows more rigid, it risks becoming a vulnerability rather than an asset.

Cheng Li-wen, KMT Chair

The Key Strategic Risk: Confidence becomes Expectation

The central question is how Xi’s increasingly confident tone will interact with a political system that no longer provides institutional friction or corrective feedback. If confidence is accompanied by strategic patience, China may pursue a longer project of economic realignment, seeking to reshape global supply chains, expand outward investment as a way to bypass sanctions, and deepen ideological consolidation at home to support technological and financial self sufficiency. If confidence instead hardens into frustration, the absence of internal checks could push Beijing toward more hazardous forms of pressure, including:

• Stronger military signaling

• Sharper economic coercion

• The rollout of a formal unification model designed to force a regional response.

Xi now speaks as a leader who believes history is moving toward him. The greatest danger is that confidence, once removed from institutional constraint, becomes expectation and expectation turns into impatience, and impatience becomes action.

For Taiwan, and for the region observing China’s next steps, the most important signal may not be what Xi says, but what Beijing’s silence now allows him to do.