# Decoding China's Two Sessions: Politics, Purges, and a New Five Year Plan Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/pekingology-580593/decoding-china-s-two-sessions-politics-purges-and-a-new-five-year-plan Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/pekingology-580593/decoding-china-s-two-sessions-politics-purges-and-a-new-five-year-plan.md Podcast: [Pekingology](https://stenobird.com/podcast/pekingology-580593) Published: 2026-03-19T09:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/CSIS6111754003.mp3 Audio file: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/CSIS6111754003.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/pekingology-580593/episodes/decoding-china-s-two-sessions-politics-purges-and-a-new-five-year-plan Duration seconds: 2938 ## Resource In this episode of Pekingology, CSIS Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin is joined by Neil Thomas, Fellow on Chinese Politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. They discuss the significance of China's recent "Two Sessions," where the National People's Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference come together with great pageantry to announce new policies. Neil unpacks the state of China's elite politics and purges, the highlights of the 15th Five-Year Plan, President Xi's conservative approach to policymaking, and who might rise to important roles during Xi's fourth term. ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/pekingology-580593/episodes/decoding-china-s-two-sessions-politics-purges-and-a-new-five-year-plan/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/pekingology-580593/decoding-china-s-two-sessions-politics-purges-and-a-new-five-year-plan.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.