At the beginning of 2026, China’s new energy vehicle industry entered a moment that many insiders had long feared but few dared to admit publicly. The so-called “golden age” of Chinese electric vehicles is ending, and what follows is not a gentle slowdown, but a harsh reckoning. The collapse in early-January sales figures was not just bad—it was shocking. In the first eleven days of the year, national retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles fell to only 117,000 units, down 38 percent year-on-year and an astonishing 67 percent from the previous month. Even more alarming was the sudden collapse in market penetration. At the end of 2025, new energy vehicles accounted for nearly 60 percent of all car sales. Just days into 2026, that figure plunged to 35.5 percent. Almost half the market disappeared in less than two weeks. BYD and Xiaomi electric cars are piling up in inventory, sitting idle in lots and warehouses. Prices keep being slashed, yet buyers don’t show up—cheap cars mean nothing when confidence is gone.

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Following the arrests of Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, and Liu Zhenli, Chief of the Joint Staff Department, on January 24, the situation in Beijing appears unusually tense. Online reports circulated that on January 25, a notice on the Beijing–Harbin Expressway (G6) toward Beijing read, “All vehicles are requested to leave the expressway as soon as possible,” and that some sections of the expressway were closed to traffic and “entirely filled with military vehicles.” Numerous eerie videos have appeared on WeChat, subtly hinting at an impending major event.

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A city does not collapse overnight. It fades quietly, street by street, light by light, person by person. And if you walk through Shanghai today, you will feel it immediately. This is not the Shanghai people remember. This is not the city that once swallowed crowds, ambition, money, and dreams. Something has changed—and it is happening silently.
There was a time when entering Shanghai on a weekend felt like stepping into a living organism. The sidewalks were packed. The subways were suffocating. You couldn’t move without brushing past strangers. Every corner buzzed with energy, noise, transactions, and desire. People came here believing that if they could just survive in this city, they had already won.

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Recently, a former mainland Chinese media professional disclosed an unverified whistleblower report, allegedly originating from a civil affairs official within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) system. The report contains a series of serious allegations regarding population figures and deaths during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. These claims have not been independently verified, but have nonetheless drawn attention online due to their scale and implications.

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Rumors surrounding the alleged arrests of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli have spread rapidly in recent days. On January 23, Michael Flynn, a former senior U.S. intelligence official, commented on the situation, describing it as a “coup within the CCP.” Flynn also explicitly named Xi Jinping, warning that “domestic turmoil in China will not end well.”

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Chinese officials admitted that 329 rivers had surged past the danger line. But behind this statistic lies a far darker truth: this crisis is not simply nature’s wrath—it’s the result of human arrogance. And at the very heart of it stands the most controversial symbol of modern China—the Three Gorges Dam.
Once glorified as the Communist Party’s ultimate triumph of engineering, the dam is now seen as its Achilles’ heel. When it was inaugurated in 2003, state media boasted that it could withstand a “once-in-a-thousand-year” flood. Later, that promise was quietly downgraded to “once in a century.” Now, as red alerts blare across central China, even that watered-down claim sounds like a cruel joke. The cracks in the illusion—both metaphorical and real—are widening.
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