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The cliché that ‘a week is a long time in politics’ can sometimes seem inapplicable to China, with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) vice-like grip on the political life of the country. But the truth is that such a system is, for all its appearance of serenity, actually more like a pressure cooker. Dramatic political events and factional turmoil can spring up as if from nowhere and in these moments the stage-managed consensus can suddenly unravel.