Cai Qi is widely regarded as Xi Jinping's most trusted adviser and, in functional terms, China's second-most powerful man. He ranks fifth among the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee but wields influence that far exceeds that position. He is 70 years old.
Born in the eastern province of Fujian, Cai was sent to work in the countryside as a teenager during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), as was Xi. When Xi was posted to Fujian in 1985, Cai was a junior official there. He spent some 15 years working closely with Xi in Fujian and neighbouring Zhejiang province. The two have known each other for over three decades.
His big break came in 2014 when Xi brought him to Beijing to join the National Security Commission. Within three years Cai was elevated to the Politburo—the party's top 25 leaders—despite not having previously been in the broader Central Committee. He then became mayor and later party chief of Beijing, where he impressed Xi by forcing out migrant labourers, tackling air pollution and managing the capital during the pandemic. He was also an energetic advocate of absolute loyalty to Xi.
His swift promotion from relative obscurity means he does not have his own political powerbase; he derives his authority entirely through his relationship with Xi. Xi broke convention in 2022 by promoting Cai and other loyalists who had strong personal ties to him but weak links with each other.
Cai is the first person in more than four decades concurrently to head the party's powerful General Office, making him in effect Xi's chief of staff. He controls the schedule and the people and information that reach Xi. He usually accompanies Xi on trips within China and abroad and even supervises his medical care.
He is also entrusted with Xi's personal security as head of the Central Guard Bureau, a plain-clothes force that protects (and keeps a close eye on) current and retired leaders. Central Guard Bureau personnel are believed to have been responsible for detaining Zhang Youxia, China's most senior uniformed officer, who was placed under investigation in January 2026.
On top of those duties, Cai heads the Central Secretariat, which implements leadership decisions and manages day-to-day operations of the party apparatus. He is also thought to lead a party commission responsible for cyber-affairs and to serve on the National Security Commission, a secretive body believed to include senior police officers, intelligence and military officials.
The breadth of his responsibilities is highly unusual in party history. Jonathan Czin, a former China analyst at the CIA, has said: "Whenever people ask me, 'What happens if Xi were to drop dead tomorrow and there was no succession plan, who would get the top job?', Cai Qi seems like the obvious answer."
Only one other person has held the General Office and Standing Committee posts simultaneously: Wang Dongxing, in 1977-78. Wang was a former bodyguard to Mao Zedong who played a central role in toppling the "Gang of Four" after Mao's death. The political sensitivity of the General Office came into focus again in 2015 when Ling Jihua, who had led it under Xi's predecessor Hu Jintao, was convicted of taking bribes, abusing power and illegally obtaining state secrets. Around the same time, Ling's brother defected to America.
Cai has played a much more active diplomatic role than previous General Office chiefs. He sat next to Xi in a meeting with Donald Trump in South Korea in October 2025 and has also recently met foreign visitors alone, including leaders of India, Egypt and Turkey. In 2024 he met two American financiers, John Thornton and Stephen Schwarzman, who are sometimes seen as back channels to Xi.
The second Trump administration has sought a solo meeting with Cai, so far unsuccessfully. In Britain, Cai was identified in a failed government attempt to prosecute two people accused of spying for China: a high-ranking British security official testified that in 2022 one of the defendants met a senior Chinese leader who had become Beijing party chief in 2017 and had joined the Politburo Standing Committee five years later—a description that fits only Cai.
Cai would until recently have been expected to retire at the next five-yearly party congress in 2027. But Xi, now 72, broke retirement norms when he secured a third term in 2022 and is expected to seek a fourth. He may want to keep veterans like Cai around for their experience and proven loyalty, having found it increasingly hard to replace those he has purged with figures he trusts. Neil Thomas of the Asia Society Policy Institute has suggested that "maybe we're entering a new era of old-man politics in Beijing."
Wu Guoguang, a former political adviser to China's leadership now at Stanford University, suggests Xi may have engineered the current power structure to counter-balance Li Qiang, who heads the State Council as premier and second-ranking party leader: "The number two is always the most possible guy to challenge the great leader."
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