Xi protégés fall as Beijing focuses on security risks

The Chinese Communist Party's growing preoccupation with stamping out perceived national security threats at home could undermine China's reputation abroad for stable leadership.

The turbulence in China's top ranks damages the aura of stability that the Chinese government has cultivated in comparison to the frequent elections and leadership transitions in democracies, Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, told Axios.

But authoritarian systems "lack a set of rules around how transition happens related to individual people in the system," bringing its own form of unpredictability, Stokes said.

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These meetings suggest the pieces could still be in place for a possible Biden-Xi meeting at APEC in San Francisco later this year, Stokes said, though Xi has not yet confirmed his attendance.

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