The Controller Without Sensors
Addendum to “The Chinese Lesson”
“The Chinese Lesson” contains the sentence that in long-term planning the authoritarian system has “a structural advantage over democracy”. The events of October 2026 show what this advantage costs: a system that belongs to one man plans far ahead, but it does not correct itself.
I. What happened in October
From 26 to 29 October 2026 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party met in Beijing for its fifth plenum. It confirmed the expulsion of 33 senior officials, more than at any time since Mao’s death. Among them are Zhang Youxia, until then the country’s highest-ranking general, and Liu Jianchao, a diplomat who had been tipped as the next foreign minister. Of the 376 full and alternate members elected in 2022, only 279 attended. According to observers, many of those absent are under investigation.
General Zhang Shengmin, 68, was promoted to the Politburo. From 2017 to July 2026 he headed the army’s discipline commission, the body that investigates officers. Of the seven members of the Central Military Commission appointed in 2022, five have been removed. Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin remain. According to an analysis by the New York Times, only seven of 30 leading generals and admirals have stayed in post since early 2023. Since 2012, according to the discipline commission, 7.9 million party members have been punished, including more than 960 senior officials.
At next year’s party congress Xi Jinping is widely expected to seek a fourth term. Hardly anyone expects him to name a successor.
II. A footballer and a joke
A few days before the plenum, the French footballer Kylian Mbappé said that the funniest picture of himself he knew showed his face on “some guy, I think he’s a Chinese dictator”. He meant Mao Zedong. Chinese state television then suspended broadcasts of the Spanish league. Chinese sponsors dropped him. The platform Xiaohongshu froze his account with more than a million followers, and Weibo blocked users from following him. Mbappé apologised in three languages.
Hardly anyone in China learned what he had said. The remark was not shared on social media or was deleted, and state media spoke only of “inappropriate remarks concerning China”. A whole country was roused against a sentence it was not allowed to hear.
III. What this means for our thesis
Long-term planning is a strength. China built up oil reserves and expanded renewable energy before the crisis in the Gulf came. That does not change. But planning is only one half of control. The other is measuring: a controller must learn whether what it does is working, and it must learn this while there is still time to correct.
In a large country this feedback comes from below, from officials, officers and entrepreneurs who report what is not working. Whoever sees millions punished and five of seven members of the top military leadership removed stops reporting bad news. The China analyst Neil Thomas warns that local officials could become overly cautious for fear of the discipline commission. That is the polite form of the same finding.
China has experienced this before. During the “Great Leap Forward” from 1958 to 1961, local officials reported grain harvests that did not exist, because low figures were treated as sabotage. Grain was requisitioned according to the reported figures. One of the worst famines in history followed. The plan was long-term. The sensors had been disconnected.
Our thesis therefore has to become more precise. China’s advantage lies not in the authoritarian system but in the long planning horizon. The authoritarian system buys this horizon at the price of losing correction. As long as the plan is right, this looks like superiority. If it is wrong, nobody stops it.
IV. What this means for companies
For companies this is not a question of morality but of risk. In a system in which the party claims leadership over everything, politics also decides economic risks. One sentence from a footballer was enough to end advertising contracts, television rights and an account with a million followers within days. German companies have experienced this before: Mercedes-Benz had to apologise in 2018 for quoting the Dalai Lama in an Instagram advertisement, and Adidas was caught in a boycott in 2021 because it had distanced itself from cotton from Xinjiang. Whoever treats China as a predictable market treats a controller without sensors as one that works.
V. What remains
The lesson for Europe remains right, but it now reads more precisely: democracies must learn to plan for the long term without giving up correction. How that might work we have described in “The Helmsman Nobody Elects” and “The Reluctance to Think Multilaterally”. A society that is allowed to report its mistakes is slower. But it does not fall blindly into the abyss.
Further reading: The Chinese Lesson · The Helmsman Nobody Elects · The Reluctance to Think Multilaterally