CAIRO (Reuters) – Hamas said on Sunday it was prepared to coordinate with the Red Cross to deliver aid to hostages it holds in Gaza, if Israel meets certain conditions, after a video it released showing an emaciated captive drew sharp criticism from Western powers.
Hamas said any coordination with the Red Cross is contingent upon Israel permanently opening humanitarian corridors and halting airstrikes during the distribution of aid.
According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Hamas, thus far, has barred humanitarian organizations from having any kind of access to the hostages and families have little or no details of their conditions.
On Saturday, Hamas released its second video in two days of Israeli hostage Evyatar David. In it, David, skeletally thin, is shown digging a hole that, he says in the video, is for his own grave. The arm of the individual holding the camera, which can be seen in the frame, is a regular width.
The video of David drew criticism from Western powers and horrified Israelis. France, Germany, the UK and the US were among countries to express outrage and Israel’s foreign ministry announced that the UN Security Council will hold a special session on Tuesday morning on the issue of the situation of the hostages in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he had asked the Red Cross to give humanitarian assistance to the hostages during a conversation with the head of the Swiss-based ICRC’s local delegation.
A statement from The Hostages Families Forum, which represents relatives of those being held in Gaza, said Hamas’ comments about the hostages cannot hide that it “has been holding innocent people in impossible conditions for over 660 days,” and demanded their immediate release.
“Until their release,” said the statement, “Hamas has the obligation to provide them with everything they need. Hamas kidnapped them and they must care for them. Every hostage who dies will be on Hamas’s hands.”
Six more people died of starvation or malnutrition in Gaza over the past 24 hours, its health ministry said on Sunday as Israel said it allowed a delivery of fuel to the enclave, in the throes of a humanitarian disaster after almost two years of war.
The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from what international humanitarian agencies say may be an unfolding famine to 175, including 93 children, since the war began, the ministry said.
Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said two trucks carrying 107 tons of diesel were set to enter Gaza, months after Israel severely restricted aid access to the enclave before easing it somewhat as starvation began to spread.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, said later in the day that four tankers of UN fuel had entered to help in operations of hospitals, bakeries, public kitchens and other essential services.
There was no immediate confirmation whether the two diesel fuel trucks had entered Gaza from Egypt.
Gaza’s health ministry has said fuel shortages have severely impaired hospital services, forcing doctors to focus on treating only critically ill or injured patients.
Fuel shipments have been rare since March, when Israel restricted the flow of aid into the enclave in what it said was pressure on Hamas to free the remaining hostages they took in their October 2023 attack on Israel.
Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza but, in response to a rising international uproar, it announced steps last week to let more aid reach the population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, approving air drops and announcing protected routes for aid convoys.
UN agencies say airdrops are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and open up access to the territory to prevent starvation among its 2.2 million people, most of whom are displaced amidst vast swathes of rubble.
COGAT said that during the past week over 23,000 tons of humanitarian aid in 1,200 trucks had entered Gaza but that hundreds of the trucks had yet to be driven to aid distribution hubs by UN and other international organisations.
Meanwhile, Belgium’s air force dropped the first in a series of its aid packages into Gaza on Sunday in a joint operation with Jordan, the Belgian defence ministry said.
France on Friday started to air-drop 40 tons of humanitarian aid.
LOOTED AID TRUCKS
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said on Sunday that nearly 1,600 aid trucks had arrived since Israel eased restrictions late in July. However, witnesses and Hamas sources said many of those trucks have been looted by desperate displaced people and armed gangs.
More than 700 trucks of fuel entered the Gaza Strip in January and February during a ceasefire before Israel broke it in March in a dispute over terms for extending it and resumed its major offensive.
Palestinian local health authorities said at least 80 people had been killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes across the coastal enclave on Sunday. Deaths included persons trying to make their way to aid distribution points in southern and central areas of Gaza, Palestinian medics said.
Among those killed was a staff member of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which said an Israeli strike at its headquarters in Khan Younis in southern Gaza ignited a fire on the first floor of the building.
The Gaza war began when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in a cross-border attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli figures. Israel’s air and ground war in densely populated Gaza has since killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to enclave health officials.
An organiser of a pro-Palestine protest in Melbourne’s CBD says demonstrators were left “traumatised and confused” after police blocked their path at King Street Bridge – while thousands in New South Wales were able to march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Tasnim Sammak from Free Palestine Coalition Naarm told Guardian Australia police did not inform protest organisers they were going to block the bridge before they arrived on Sunday afternoon.
Police had previously urged protesters to change their plans, claiming that blocking King Street Bridge – a major thoroughfare into Melbourne’s CBD – could delay emergency services and put lives at risk.
Sammak estimated about 25,000 people protesting against the ongoing starvation in Gaza and demanding a ceasefire marched from the State Library of Victoria through the city to the bridge and were “shocked” to be met by a “heavy police presence”.
“It was a huge display of force by Victoria police against civilians and against members of the public who have been protesting for over 90 weeks in Melbourne,” Sammak said.
Images showed police in riot gear behind barricades on King Street Bridge, backed by a row of mounted officers and riot squad vans.
Sammak said protesters initially sat down at the bridge crossing, with footage showing fellow organiser Mohammad Sharab urging the crowd to remain calm.
“We are sitting here for Palestine … peacefully,” Sharab said.
Police mostly stood behind their shields, says Jordan van den Lamb, who attended the rally. Photograph: Con Chronis/EPA
“We have women, children, vulnerable people.”
Jordan van den Lamb, a Victorian Socialists candidate known online as PurplePingers, attended the protest. He said he was “shocked” to turn on to King Street and see the bridge closed and police “kitted out in riot gear, shields, horses, armoured vehicles, the lot”.
“I think they assumed that if they shut down the bridge, the protest would be less visible but really it’s drawn more attention to the protest,” van den Lamb said.
“It would have just been done in half an hour if they hadn’t closed the bridge. It’s a bit stupid of them, really.”
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He said police mostly stood silently behind their shields, with the main protest dispersing around 3pm as most attenders turned back towards the State Library.
A “small group” wearing masks and goggles stayed, van den Lamb said. Footage shows the group stopped traffic, burnt an Australian flag and spray-painted “Abolish Australia” on to Spencer Street.
In a statement, police said about 3,000 protesters gathered at the State Library on Sunday and “despite repeated requests from police, they marched to King Street”.
“As a result of this, Victoria police closed the King Street Bridge and diversions were put in place,” the statement said.
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They confirmed there were no arrests but they were following up a report that an egg was thrown at a person during the protest.
Police did not answer specific questions about how many officers were deployed or the decision-making behind blocking the bridge, citing operational reasons. They said there had been no reports made to them of disruption to emergency services.
Sammak said protesters were left “feeling very traumatised and confused” by the police response, suggesting it was made at the “the encouragement” of the premier, Jacinta Allan.
“The Sydney Harbour Bridge was facilitated quite freely and easily, and there was a positive atmosphere. So why in Melbourne did we have to face riot cops?” Sammak said.
On Saturday, Allan had warned any protesters disrupting emergency services “will be dealt with swiftly”. She defended her comments on Monday, telling ABC Radio Melbourne she had been focused on “ensuring that safety wasn’t compromised”.
Thousands of protesters marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge during a pro-Palestinian rally on the same day. Photograph: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images
Allan said the protest was peaceful and backed the police response. She also said there was “a small group of extremists behaving in an extreme way”.
David Mejia-Canales, senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, said there had also been a heavy-handed response to Sydney’s protest. On Saturday, NSW police had sought an order to prohibit the protest going ahead but it was rejected by the supreme court.
“In NSW and Victoria we are seeing how anti-protest laws from the Minns and Allan governments are emboldening heavy handed policing and the repressive treatment of protesters and attempts to shut down protests,” Mejia-Canales said.
“Governments and police have a legal obligation to protect protesters, not punish or hinder people who are peacefully demonstrating and exercising their human right to demand justice.”
For more than a decade, Chinese politics has been defined by one man: Xi Jinping. Since Xi assumed leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he has made himself into a strongman ruler. He has remade the CCP elite through a wide-ranging purge and corruption crackdown. He has curbed civil society and suppressed dissent. He has reorganized and modernized the military. And he has reinvigorated the role of the state in the economy.
Xi’s rise has also redefined China’s relationship with the rest of the world. He has pursued a more muscular foreign policy, including by increasing the tempo of military drills in the Taiwan Strait and overseeing a growing military presence in the South China Sea. He has encouraged (and then later reined in) a battalion of “wolf warrior” diplomats who engaged in a harsh war of words with foreign critics. And he has pushed China closer to Russia, even after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a war in Ukraine. In short, it has been a new era for China. It has been Xi’s era.
Soon, however, everything will start to change. As the CCP elite begins the search for a leader to replace the 72-year-old Xi, China is transitioning from a phase defined by power consolidation to one defined by the question of succession. For any authoritarian regime, political succession is a moment of peril, and for all its strengths, the CCP is no exception. The last time the party dealt with the problem of political succession—when Xi took over from Hu Jintao—rumors swirled in Beijing of coup attempts, failed assassinations, and tanks on the streets. The rumors may have been unfounded, but the political drama at the top was real.
Xi probably has years, perhaps even more than a decade, before he steps down. But the reality is that succession shapes political choices well before leaders finally relinquish control. Chinese rulers, sensitive to their legacies, jostle to install people who will carry on their political agendas. Mao Zedong’s fixation with maintaining China’s revolutionary spirit after his death led to the Cultural Revolution, a mass political campaign that reshuffled the CCP leadership repeatedly during the last decade of Mao’s life.
Xi’s succession is unlikely to be as catastrophic, but the prelude, execution, and aftermath of transitioning power will shape China’s foreign and domestic politics in the coming years. The United States and its allies may be tempted to exploit this internal disruption, but meddling in the process would probably backfire. Instead, they should be mindful of the fact that, in the past, fights over succession have contributed to disastrous Chinese foreign policy choices. The vacuum left by a strongman such as Xi will make succession especially challenging, potentially triggering a scramble for power and a fight over the direction of the country. Such instability in the world’s second-largest economy could ripple beyond China’s borders—particularly as China navigates its tense relationship with Taiwan.
THE MAO MODEL
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, in 1949, only one of Xi’s five predecessors stepped aside fully and willingly. Mao, the strongman founder of communist China, wielded overwhelming power and authority within the party-state apparatus and ruled the country until the day he died. Hua Guofeng, Mao’s heir, was able to hold on to power for only a few yearsbefore being pushed aside.Deng Xiaoping, the famous architect of China’s economic reforms, maintained his grip over the CCP’s most important decisions even after relinquishing his formal titles and positions. Until his health declined in the mid-1990s, Deng was said to be the most powerful man in China, even though his only formal title was honorary president of an association of bridge players. The man who succeeded Deng as paramount leader, Jiang Zemin, clung to the important post of military chief despite giving up his position as party leader, undercutting his successor, Hu Jintao. Only Hu gave up power all at once in a relatively orderly succession, to Xi, but that process was tainted by the dramatic downfall of a Xi rival and powerful Politburo member, Bo Xilai.
Xi’s return to strongman politics means his succession is likely to follow the pattern set by Mao and Deng, both of whom tried to select a successor who would rule as they would. Xi may see the challenge as discerning who among the thousands of cadres in the senior ranks of the CCP holds political beliefs similar to his own. But history also suggests that finding a political doppelganger will be insufficient. Whoever Xi taps will need to survive the cutthroat machinations of those he passes over. A new political game will begin the moment that Xi begins to step aside: Will those who remain inside the halls of political power support the new leader? Or will they resist the agenda that the new leader champions, undermine his authority, or conspire to remove him?
Here, Hua Guofeng’s story is revealing. Mao selected Hua in 1976, when Mao’s health was failing. The problem for Hua was that he was a cadre of middling status and influence within the CCP: someone whom Mao and his allies could control, and not a figure who could survive a political knife fight. Mao had written Hua a note that read, “With you in charge, I am at ease.” But even Mao’s word was not enough to keep Hua in power. In the end, he needed the military’s backing.
A struggle over succession is unlikely to stay inside China’s borders.
On the night of September 8, 1976, as Mao hovered near death, senior members of the Politburo gathered in a sickroom in the leadership compound in Beijing to pay their final respects. The chairman was no longer able to speak. Instead, he raised a frail hand and reached out to one visitor—Marshal Ye Jianying, one of the country’s most venerated military figures. Clasping Ye’s hand, Mao’s lips moved faintly, and Ye later told his colleagues that Mao instructed him to back Hua as his designated heir.
Mao’s choice to single out Ye, as opposed to the other civilian elites who would survive him, was intentional. Hua had little experience in national politics or with the military brass. When Hua’s enemies came for him, Ye and those with similar military credentials would have to decide whether to stand by him or abandon him. The head of the Chinese military was, as the sociologist Ezra Vogel has observed, the CCP’s de facto “kingmaker.”
Ye initially stood by Hua during the first assault on his leadership, which was launched immediately after Mao’s death by Mao’s wife and three radical compatriots known as the Gang of Four. With the support of Ye and other top military leaders, People’s Liberation Army troops arrested the gang. This ensured that Hua would hold on to power, but only as long as the PLA supported him. Just two years later, when Deng orchestrated a second challenge to Hua’s leadership, Ye and other military commanders sided with Deng, who had extensive social connections and personal rapport with senior military officers.
Delegates arriving for the closing session of the National People’s Congress, Beijing, March 2025Tingshu Wang / Reuters
Xi will have multiple ways to credential his successor, but as the story of Mao’s troubled succession suggests, no facet of his successor’s dossier will be more important than his ties to and rapport with the military. Outside observers tend to downplay the role of the PLA in Chinese politics. After all, the Chinese military has never seized political control, as have armed forces in autocracies such as Argentina and Pakistan. To many, this suggests that modern China has cultivated strong norms of civilian control—such that the party unquestionably “commands the gun,” as Mao famously put it.
But the absence of direct military rule belies the quiet power that the PLA wields in China. The reality is that the Chinese military exercises a form of coercive control, shaping interactions among decision-makers. The reason is simple: even though Chinese leaders don’t fear a direct challenge from the military, they constantly face that risk from civilian rivals. And in such struggles, the PLA acts as an implicit kingmaker as civilian leaders try to manipulate the levers of control over the military to ensure that they, and not their opponents, have the upper hand. When Deng needed to bolster the standing of his chosen successors, for instance, he appointed his close ally Admiral Liu Huaqing, the father of the Chinese navy, to the Politburo Standing Committee—an unusually high promotion for a military officer that has not since been replicated.
It is tempting to think that China is so fundamentally different today that the military’s latent role in succession is the artifact of a bygone era. In reality, the military remains pivotal in China’s elite politics, and control over it will remain a key asset for future political leaders. The military does not pick leaders on its own—Xi was reportedly chosen because he beat Li Keqiang in a straw poll of current and retired civilian and military leaders—but military backing can make a leader immune to civilian challenges. Hu Jintao, for example, was considered politically weak in part because his career trajectory offered comparatively few opportunities to build personal connections to the military. When Hu entered office, he had no ties to the members inside China’s apex military organization, the Central Military Commission. In contrast, through what was likely a combination of fortuitous assignments and savvy politicking, Xi started with ties to four out of ten CMC members—a leg up that gave him the latitude to start a wide-ranging purge of rival elites and reorder the military brass. For personalist leaders such as Xi and Mao, continuous purges ensure that no rival power centers emerge and that the military stays loyal. Xi’s recent reshuffling of the CMC and the PLA shows that Xi is continuing to play this old game.
THE SUCCESSOR SHUFFLE
A fundamental dilemma of succession is that strong and competent successors can pose a threat to the leader himself. Being the next in line in China during periods of personalist rule is thus politically dangerous. Historically, Chinese strongmen have cycled through multiple successors before making their final selection. Mao, for instance, picked Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao as his potential heirs before casting them aside. He selected Hua only when his health was unmistakably failing. Once secure in his position, Deng followed a similar path, removing two presumed successors, CCP General Secretaries Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, before settling on Jiang Zemin.
All this suggests that Xi may have trouble settling on a successor. On the one hand, he needs to ensure that the successor learns how to operate the levers of power throughout the party and military bureaucracy. On the other hand, Xi will probably want to make sure his successor does not gain enough power to become an independent player too early. Moreover, if Xi is indecisive, shuffling through multiple candidates as Mao and Deng did, it could destabilize the CCP’s hold on power by creating opportunities for splits within the party elite.
The 1989 student-led protest movement, for instance, which led to violent repression at Tiananmen Square, began as a response to the sudden death of Hu Yaobang, the liberal leader who had been Deng’s most likely successor until Deng and other party elders removed him from his post as party secretary for being too lenient in response to an earlier wave of student protests. Hu’s death—a heart attack during a meeting of the Politburo—galvanized protesters partly because students saw a more liberal future for China slipping from their grasp. Student protesters pushing Chinese political leaders to adopt liberal reforms found tacit support from Deng’s second heir apparent, Zhao Ziyang, until Deng pushed him aside and placed him under house arrest. Jiang Zemin quietly arrived in Beijing in the middle of the protests to succeed Zhao, in part because party elites saw Jiang as someone who was ideologically palatable to all sides but a hard-liner on repressing protest.
PATH TO WAR?
The drama created by a struggle over succession is unlikely to stay inside China’s borders: it will affect China’s foreign policy and its relations with the rest of the world, as well. Xi is mindful of his legacy, and a sense that his time is limited may influence his decision-making and increase his appetite for risk—especially when it comes to Taiwan. He has instructed the military to be ready to carry out a campaign against the island by 2027. Although public reporting offers little evidence to definitively identify the conditions under which Xi would greenlight those moves, and there is no 2027 deadline for “reunification” with Taiwan, he clearly sees it as part of his program of national rejuvenation. If he hears the succession clock ticking, he could become more willing to gamble on war.
On the other hand, no legacy would be worse than being the leader who tried to unify with Taiwan—and failed. And despite the advances the Chinese military has made over the past decades, a successful blockade or invasion is far from guaranteed. And even if Xi succeeded on the battlefield, the cost might be high: China could become an international pariah, its economy sapped by sanctions, and its security forces saddled with a new, taxing mission of maintaining control of a restive Taiwan.
Once again, the PLA’s role might prove decisive. As Xi begins to hand over power, he will be constantly looking over his shoulder to ensure the military brass features the right mix of people with ties to the next in line and that the military is showing no signs of political disloyalty to Xi’s preferred successor. These conditions are ripe for the politicization of intelligence assessments and military judgments. It may be more difficult for subordinates to speak candidly about the costs associated with invasion, for instance, and China’s intelligence assessment processes could become tainted as analysts craft vague reports that can be interpreted as aligned with the leader’s thinking—no matter what it turns out to be.
Rumors of Xi’s ousting are indications of trouble down the road.
By now, Xi may be adept at mentally correcting for such analytical pathologies when he consumes intelligence reporting and military campaign projections. The challenge of extracting truthful reporting from the bureaucratic apparatus is not new for China; Mao famously commented that he shared U.S. President Richard Nixon’s distrust of diplomats, and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger cracked jokes together about the woes of the bureaucratic state. But it is an open question whether Xi will be able to keep one step ahead of his advisers’ assessments as he reaches his twilight years. Xi’s unwillingness to adjust course on his unpopular “zero COVID” policies, which led to protests in 2022, hints that he may not be getting crucial information. And whoever takes Xi’s place will likely lack the foreign policy experience necessary to know whom and what to trust.
More ominously, because of the military’s hidden hand in Chinese politics, war has served a useful political purpose during past successions. War provides an opportunity to showcase a new leader’s command over the PLA; seeing the senior military leadership obeying the new leader’s orders might then serve to deter a potential political challenger.
China’s short-lived invasion of Vietnam, in February 1979—the last time the PLA engaged in a full-scale conflict—offers a chilling reminder of how succession intrigue and miscalculation can work in tandem to push Chinese leaders to take up arms. The planning for the war coincided with Deng’s gambit to oust Hua. One of the reasons the invasion may have been attractive to Deng is that it offered an opportunity to send a not-so-subtle reminder of his deep military roots. In this way, the war’s battlefield outcome may have mattered less to Deng than its political upside in domestic politics.
At the same time, the assessment process before the war ranks among the worst in China’s history. Senior officers struggled to understand Deng’s strategic objectives and questioned whether the beleaguered PLA would be able to push Hanoi to the negotiating table. But because many knew that Deng favored military action, they kept quiet. The invasion failed in its primary strategic goal: to compel an immediate change in Vietnam’s policy toward the Soviet Union and Cambodia. Moreover, in the eyes of Vietnamese decision-makers, China’s lackluster battlefield performance highlighted how much of a toll the Cultural Revolution had taken on its military effectiveness—the exact opposite outcome that Chinese leaders were hoping to achieve.
HEIR UNAPPARENT
In China, the game of political succession plays out behind the high red walls of CCP headquarters at Zhongnanhai, making it difficult for outside observers to know what to look for and what to expect. The lack of public information about CCP politics also means that while Xi is in power, he will be subjected to regular rumors that he is in political trouble. This summer, for example, word circulated that Xi is on the verge of being pushed out of office, allegedly elbowed aside by his predecessor, Hu Jintao, and his military chief, Zhang Youxia. Such rumors about Xi’s premature political demise can usually be safely discounted. The odds that China’s top leader will be removed from office are not zero, but they are exceedingly small. Yet even if these rumors are not true, they are telling; indeed, they are products of a system of government in which the dynamics of leadership succession will play an increasingly urgent role.
As long as Xi is in good health, he will probably serve at least one more term, which would mean staying in power until 2032 or later, and he alone will likely decide who succeeds him. Previously, retired leaders have played important roles in the succession process, serving, for instance, on a ceremonial body called the party presidium. This time around, however, the party’s elders may sit the process out. At 82 years old, former General Secretary Hu Jintao is thought to be in poor health; in his most recent public appearance during the 2022 party conclave, he seemed to be confused as he was led off stage in a humiliating scene. Other surviving party elders are also unlikely to intervene; some, such as former premier Wen Jiabao, may lack the stature, and others, such as the retired premier, Zhu Rongji, are well past 90 years old.
If Xi dies without having picked a successor, there will be a scramble. According to the CCP constitution, the leader should be elected in a plenary session of the entire Central Committee, which has more than 200 members. Yet before this group convenes, a subset of party higher-ups, perhaps in consultation with retired leaders and military generals, would meet and essentially predetermine the outcome. A natural choice, should Xi die unexpectedly, might be Premier Li Qiang, who is 66. But there are no guarantees: a civilian with the backing of the military, security services, and enough of the Politburo could push him aside.
The best-case scenario might be for Xi to anoint a successor who is permitted to quietly build a base of power in Xi’s final years. Following the Tiananmen Square crackdown, Deng handed Jiang Zemin the formal posts of military and party chief in 1989 while Deng was aging but still vigorous. Jiang was a newcomer to both Beijing and elite politics when Deng handed him the reins. Jiang’s position, particularly his weak ties to the military, offered Deng continued leverage, and Deng used his final years to shepherd Jiang through his first years in power, insulating the novice leader from rivals while also pushing him firmly toward economic liberalism. By contrast, if Xi anoints a successor but refuses, or is unable, to allow him to build a power base, the next in line will be vulnerable to potentially chaotic leadership challenges after Xi dies—similar to what befell Hua Guofeng.
To follow the Deng model, Xi would need to select someone relatively young who can carry his agenda forward for years. He could first appoint his chosen successor to the position of head of the party secretariat, an important job that would familiarize him with the internal workings of the Politburo. And eventually, Xi may even make this person a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission to give him some experience with military affairs and the power to rule. The goal is likely for the successor to be ready to assume the top job when he is in his late 50s or early 60s.
Washington must avoid the temptation to exploit the succession challenge.
Strikingly, none of the current members of the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee fit this profile. Li Qiang will be in his late 60s in 2027 and in his 70s in 2032, significantly older than recent party leaders when they took office. Cai Qi holds the critical position as head of the party secretariat, a steppingstone to the top job, but he is only a couple of years younger than Xi. Ding Xuexiang will be 65 in 2027, which makes him a more plausible choice, but he has never governed a province or municipality, a likely prerequisite to ensure the successor is a competent administrator. The remaining three men—Li Xi, Wang Huning, and Zhao Leji—are also too old to be likely contenders.
The larger Politburo offers some more candidates, but each comes with a big asterisk by his name. Chen Jining is the party secretary of Shanghai, a job that both Xi and Jiang held—and, at 61, one of the youngest members of the Politburo. But Chen is not a sitting member of the Standing Committee, and Xi would probably want to elevate him a few years before he took over so he could learn the ropes. (Xi was elevated to the Standing Committee five years before he became CCP general secretary.)By the time Chen was ready, he would be older than Jiang, Hu, and Xi were when they took office.
The outside world would most likely learn of potential successors during the next party congress, which is expected in 2027, and which is usually when the CCP announces reshufflings of the Politburo Standing Committee. But looking at the field of candidates, if Xi makes his selection with an eye toward a 2032 handover, he will need to designate an older heir than has been typical, or he will have to go with a surprise dark horse who lacks the typical pedigree.
An older heir would mean that Xi’s hand-picked successor would not be able to carry Xi’s vision forward for very long, which could create further uncertainty for the country. Xi will want to avoid the problem that the Soviets faced in their regime’s last decade. After Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, his two aging heirs both lasted only a year in office before dying themselves. The result was the elevation of Mikhail Gorbachev, who oversaw the regime’s demise. Xi often speaks of the fall of the Soviet Union and wants to prevent China from suffering the same fate.
But a surprise pick would also be risky, because it would mean passing over all the current members of the 24-man Politburo. An entire generation of politicians, in other words, would lose the chance to lead—and their frustrated ambitions could shape Chinese politics for years to come. Such internal tension could create the opportunity for a politician to emerge from the wings, either with a reform agenda, as Deng did in 1978, or with an even more conservative and nationalist agenda than Xi holds.
COURSE CORRECTION?
All this points to a political atmosphere that will be increasingly tense as the problem of succession hovers over the party. Each year that Xi fails to identify and groom a successor will increase the possibility of more chaotic paths for the party and for China, such as the elevation of a weak successor who falls victim to a power struggle. In this way, the periodic rumors about Xi’s alleged political demise are urgent signals not because they are true but because they are indications of trouble down the road.
American policymakers should appreciate the risks inherent in China’s coming succession challenge, but they must also avoid the temptation to exploit it for geopolitical gain. Attempting to intervene in the succession process would violate principles of sovereignty and could elevate domestic political tensions in ways that outside actors cannot anticipate. Internal speeches show that the leadership, including Xi himself, still views the 1989 student-led protest movement as a plot by “hostile Western forces” to bring down the party, and this mistrust continues to color the U.S.-Chinese relationship.
Instead of meddling, the United States should let the process unfold while watching it closely. Although the party’s geopolitical assessments and ideological convictions are bigger than Xi, it is not unreasonable to expect a course correction from the post-Xi years, in which a more moderate and temperate leader emerges—someone who is not stridently nationalist and who can break down the walls that the current leadership has built around the country.
Indeed, in the past, the CCP has corrected course through the succession process. There is a hopeful lesson for the coming years in the transition from Mao’s radical socialism to Deng’s more pragmatic policy of reform and opening. “If we don’t reform, the party is at a dead end,” Deng famously said. Xi’s successor might come to the same conclusion.
CAIRO: Hamas said on Sunday it was prepared to coordinate with the Red Cross to deliver aid to hostages it holds in Gaza, if Israel meets certain conditions, after a video it released showing an emaciated captive drew sharp criticism from Western powers.
Hamas said any coordination with the Red Cross is contingent upon Israel permanently opening humanitarian corridors and halting airstrikes during the distribution of aid.
According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Hamas, thus far, has barred humanitarian organizations from having any kind of access to the hostages and families have little or no details of their conditions.
On Saturday, Hamas released its second video in two days of Israeli hostage Evyatar David. In it, David, skeletally thin, is shown digging a hole that, he says in the video, is for his own grave.
The arm of the individual holding the camera, which can be seen in the frame, is a regular width.
The video of David drew criticism from Western powers and horrified Israelis. France, Germany, the UK and the U.S. were among countries to express outrage and Israel’s foreign ministry announced that the UN Security Council will hold a special session on Tuesday morning on the issue of the situation of the hostages in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he had asked the Red Cross to give humanitarian assistance to the hostages during a conversation with the head of the Swiss-based ICRC’s local delegation.
A statement from The Hostages Families Forum, which represents relatives of those being held in Gaza, said Hamas’ comments about the hostages cannot hide that it “has been holding innocent people in impossible conditions for over 660 days,” and demanded their immediate release.
“Until their release,” said the statement, “Hamas has the obligation to provide them with everything they need. Hamas kidnapped them and they must care for them. Every hostage who dies will be on Hamas’s hands.”
Six more people died of starvation or malnutrition in Gaza over the past 24 hours, its health ministry said on Sunday as Israel said it allowed a delivery of fuel to the enclave, in the throes of a humanitarian disaster after almost two years of war.
The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from what international humanitarian agencies say may be an unfolding famine to 175, including 93 children, since the war began, the ministry said.
Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said two trucks carrying 107 tons of diesel were set to enter Gaza, months after Israel severely restricted aid access to the enclave before easing it somewhat as starvation began to spread.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, said later in the day that four tankers of U.N. fuel had entered to help in operations of hospitals, bakeries, public kitchens and other essential services.
There was no immediate confirmation whether the two diesel fuel trucks had entered Gaza from Egypt.
US envoy tells Israeli hostage families he is working on plan to end Gaza War
Gaza’s health ministry has said fuel shortages have severely impaired hospital services, forcing doctors to focus on treating only critically ill or injured patients.
Fuel shipments have been rare since March, when Israel restricted the flow of aid into the enclave in what it said was pressure on Hamas group to free the remaining hostages they took in their October 2023 attack on Israel.
Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza but, in response to a rising international uproar, it announced steps last week to let more aid reach the population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, approving air drops and announcing protected routes for aid convoys.
U.N. agencies say airdrops are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and open up access to the territory to prevent starvation among its 2.2 million people, most of whom are displaced amidst vast swathes of rubble.
COGAT said that during the past week over 23,000 tons of humanitarian aid in 1,200 trucks had entered Gaza but that hundreds of the trucks had yet to be driven to aid distribution hubs by U.N. and other international organisations.
Meanwhile, Belgium’s air force dropped the first in a series of its aid packages into Gaza on Sunday in a joint operation with Jordan, the Belgian defence ministry said.
France on Friday started to air-drop 40 tons of humanitarian aid.
Looted aid trucks
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said on Sunday that nearly 1,600 aid trucks had arrived since Israel eased restrictions late in July. However, witnesses and Hamas sources said many of those trucks have been looted by desperate displaced people and armed gangs.
More than 700 trucks of fuel entered the Gaza Strip in January and February during a ceasefire before Israel broke it in March in a dispute over terms for extending it and resumed its major offensive.
Palestinian local health authorities said at least 80 people had been killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes across the coastal enclave on Sunday.
Deaths included persons trying to make their way to aid distribution points in southern and central areas of Gaza, Palestinian medics said.
Among those killed was a staff member of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which said an Israeli strike at its headquarters in Khan Younis in southern Gaza ignited a fire on the first floor of the building.
The Gaza war began when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in a cross-border attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli figures. Israel’s air and ground war in densely populated Gaza has since killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to enclave health officials.
More than 400,000 Hindus took part in a month-long pilgrimage in contested Indian-run Kashmir, authorities said, shrugging off security worries weeks after conflict with Pakistan.
The pilgrimage began on July 3 and closes officially on August 9, but organisers said that lashing rains had damaged narrow paths forcing a premature end.
Official Vijay Kumar Bidhuri said in a statement late Saturday that 415,000 pilgrims had taken part.
Many of the faithful began their trek to the Amarnath ice pillar from near Pahalgam, where gunmen on April 22 killed 26 mostly Hindu tourists in the Muslim-majority region.
New Delhi said the gunmen were backed by Pakistan, claims Islamabad rejected — triggering a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic measures that escalated into a four-day conflict.
It was the worst standoff by the nuclear-armed nations since 1999, with more than 70 people killed in missile, drone and artillery fire on both sides, before a May 10 ceasefire. AFP
China and Russia began joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan on Sunday as they seek to reinforce their partnership and counterbalance what they see as a US-led global order.
Alongside economic and political ties, Moscow and Beijing have strengthened their military cooperation in recent years, and their relations have deepened since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The “Joint Sea-2025” exercises kicked off in waters near the Russian port of Vladivostok and would last for three days, China’s defence ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
The two sides will hold “submarine rescue, joint anti-submarine, air defence and anti-missile operations, and maritime combat”.
Four Chinese vessels, including guided-missile destroyers Shaoxing and Urumqi, are participating in the exercises alongside Russian ships, the ministry said.
After the drills, the two countries will conduct naval patrols in “relevant waters of the Pacific”.
China and Russia have carried out annual drills for several years, with the “Joint Sea” exercises beginning in 2012.
Last year’s drills were held along China’s southern coast. The Chinese defence ministry said Friday that this year’s exercises were aimed at “further deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership” of the two countries.
China has never denounced Russia’s more than three-year war nor called for it to withdraw its troops, and many of Ukraine’s allies, including the United States, believe that Beijing has provided support to Moscow.
China insists it is a neutral party, regularly calling for an end to the fighting while also accusing Western countries of prolonging the conflict by arming Ukraine. AFP
PARIS (Agencies) – France – alongside other European nations – is pursuing airdrops of humanitarian aid into the Gaza strip, with the help of Middle East partners. However, it insists that fully opening land crossings is the only efficient way to help the more than two million Palestinians who aid agencies say are facing starvation.
France has been loading aid into its military transport aircraft at a base in Jordan before dropping it off over the Gaza strip.
The Jordanian army has been assisting France with flight plans and drop locations to avoid accidents when the pallets land.
The first airdrop took place on Friday, followed by one on Saturday without any hitches, the French army told Franceinfo.
There are still 28 tons of products to be delivered out of the total 40 promised by France.
Concern has escalated in the past week about hunger in the Gaza Strip after more than 21 months of war, which started after Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out a deadly attack against Israel in October 2023.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 60,430 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
Israel has also heavily restricted the entry of aid into Gaza, already under blockade for 15 years before the ongoing war.
According to the United Nations, the Palestinian territory is threatened with “widespread famine,” and would need “more than 62,000 tons of vital aid each month “to cover the most basic humanitarian needs for food and nutrition.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot on Saturday underlined France’s intention to step up aid delivieries. “We will continue. Without respite. But only the immediate opening of land crossings will allow for massive and unhindered delivery,” he wrote on the social network X.
More than 50 tons of French humanitarian cargo are stuck in Egypt, a few kilometres from the border with Gaza.
Earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron thanked Jordanian, Emirati, and German partners for their support.
But he insisted that “airdrops are not enough. Israel must grant full humanitarian access to address the risk of famine.”
International organisations have for months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza, including refusing to issue border crossing permits, slow customs clearance, limited access points, and imposing dangerous routes.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – supported by Israel and the United States and opposed by NGOs – has since May become the main channel for distributing food but only has four main sites.
The UN has said that 6,000 trucks are awaiting permission from Israel to enter the occupied Palestinian territory.
INSUFFICIENT DELIVERIES
Other European nations such as Germany, Britain, Spain and Italy have also begun delivering aid by air.
Germany staged its first food airdrops into Gaza on Thursday and Friday, which coincided with a visit by Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, who warned that “the humanitarian disaster in Gaza is beyond imagination.”
At a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wadephul, Wadephul urged Israel “to provide humanitarian and medical aid to prevent mass starvation from becoming a reality”.
Italy said Friday it would begin air drops over Gaza, becoming the latest European countries to do so.
“I have given the green light to a mission involving Army and Air Force assets for the transport and airdrop of basic necessities to civilians in Gaza, who have been severely affected by the ongoing conflict,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said in a statement.
Italy’s air force will work with Jordan’s military to air drop special containers containing essential goods, with the first drops on 9 August, he said.
Spain on Friday said it had already air-dropped 12 tonnes of food into Gaza.
Meanwhile, the United States special envoy Steve Witkoff promised a plan to deliver more food to Gaza after inspecting a US-backed GHF distribution centre on Friday.
The visit was intended to give “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza,” Witkoff said.
