Introduction

This week’s China Insider discusses the reasons and calculations behind Xi Jinping’s lavish celebration of the 130th birthday of Mao Zedong, the former Chinese Communist Party dictator, on December 26. The episode further analyzes China’s increasingly significant role in buttressing Russia’s war in Ukraine and Hamas’s war in the Middle East, and why this support is strategically important for the CCP. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the CCP’s latest purge and shakeup of the senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leaders as related to China’s military ambitions and capabilities.