Polymarket Traders Have Bet Nearly $90 Million on Whether Xi Jinping Will Lose Power

On May 25, 2026, the CCP-controlled Xinhua News Agency reported that Foreign Minister Wang Yi had met separately on the same day with Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan and with Field Marshal Asim Munir, the Chief of Defence Forces of Pakistan and Chief of Army Staff. Ten months earlier, the senior Chinese official who had received Munir on his last Beijing visit was Zhang Youxia, then a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, who has since been placed under investigation and removed.

China’s Defense Minister Dong Jun was absent from both Wang Yi’s meeting with Munir and Xi Jinping’s subsequent meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

On Polymarket, one of the world’s largest prediction market platforms, traders have been placing wagers on whether Dong Jun will be purged and far larger ones on whether Xi Jinping himself will be removed from power.

Dong Jun’s conspicuous absence

According to People’s Daily, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif arrived in Beijing on May 25, 2026, leading a delegation that included Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of Army Staff, alongside Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal. Pakistan has emerged in recent months as a central mediator between the United States and Iran, hosting face-to-face talks last month between the two sides.

Xinhua reported the same day that Wang Yi met separately with Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan and with Field Marshal Munir. The Chinese state media folded the two meetings into a single dispatch. A foreign minister receiving the chief military officer of another country is itself off the standard diplomatic script.

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Dong Jun, China’s Defense Minister, was not visible at either meeting. He did not appear in the publicly available imagery from Xi Jinping’s afternoon meeting with Sharif’s delegation either, despite the visiting Pakistani side being led by both the prime minister and the chief of defence forces.

By comparison, when Xi met U.S. President Donald Trump and the American delegation at the Great Hall of the People on May 14, Dong Jun appeared alongside Wang Yi as part of the Chinese reception line. Trump’s delegation had included Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. The standard Chinese protocol for receiving a foreign military leader includes the host nation’s defense minister.

Pakistani Field Marshal Munir’s previous Beijing visit, roughly ten months earlier, had been received by Zhang Youxia, then a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. Zhang was placed under CCDI investigation in January 2026 and has since been removed from his post. The CMC, which had seven members at the start of the cycle, now consists of two: Xi himself, and “anti-corruption” officer Zhang Shengmin.

Dong Jun’s position has been the subject of public speculation for months, including in the international prediction markets.

Polymarket traders have wagered nearly $90 million on whether Xi stays in power

The international prediction market Polymarket, which allows users to buy and sell shares in yes/no propositions about real-world events, has hosted multiple high-volume markets on Xi Jinping’s tenure. The data reflects wagers placed by real traders using real money, and the resulting prices reflect the traders’ assessments of the underlying probabilities.

The first major Xi tenure market, “Xi Jinping out in 2025?”, launched on June 12, 2025 and resolved at the end of December 2025 with Xi remaining in power. Total trading volume reached $78.7 million across the market’s life. The market closed at zero percent probability for “Yes” because Xi did not, in fact, leave office.

The market did briefly spike during the year. In late June 2025, around the time of the most prominent military purges, the “Yes” probability reached approximately 14 percent. In late July 2025, it reached approximately 13.5 percent. Polymarket users at the time pointed to factors including the documented military purges, Xi’s reduced visibility in CCP state media coverage, and broader speculation about a possible political transition in China.

A successor market, “Xi Jinping out before 2027?”, launched on July 3, 2025 and remains active. Total trading volume on that market has now reached approximately $9.5 million. The current implied probability for Xi leaving power before the end of 2026 sits at six to seven percent. The market peaked at a higher probability earlier in its life, around the time of the early 2026 purges of senior PLA leadership.

A separate Polymarket market titled “Who will Xi Jinping purge in 2026?” has Dong Jun at or near the top by implied probability. The total trading volume on that market, while smaller than the Xi tenure markets, is still active. Other names with significant trader weight on the same market include CMC Discipline Inspection Secretary Zhang Shengmin and Politburo Standing Committee member Cai Qi.

What the markets are tracking

The Xi-removal markets, in aggregate, have drawn nearly $90 million in trading volume since June 2025. The implied probabilities have generally tracked the public visibility of CCP military purges and the related Western analytical commentary. Reductions in Xi’s media coverage, the dismissal of multiple senior officers, and the public dismantling of the CMC from seven members to two have all corresponded to periods of elevated “Yes” pricing.

Polymarket traders, whatever they believe about any individual outcome, agree on one underlying fact. The question of Xi Jinping’s continued grip on power has become an item of regular speculation on the same prediction-market infrastructure used to bet on football matches and election outcomes. The international betting community has placed Xi on the table, with the goal of converting their analysis of his political position into financial returns.

For the participants in the Polymarket prediction markets, the question of whether Xi Jinping will be removed in an internal CCP power struggle is no different, structurally, from a question about a cricket match or a horse race.

By Jian Yi, Vision Times