Few things going on there. Disappearing a couple generals is pretty par for the course for Xi and it wouldn’t be ruffling any feathers if the economy wasn’t stumbling, unemployment wasn’t crazy high and his covid policy wasn’t an unmitigated paying-it-forward disaster.

He’s probably asserting authority because he knows he’s run out of a lot of runway, and I’ve read things and listened to people saying that Xi is really at the end of his rope, but being in China myself recently, so educated guess having talked to Chinese people, unless there’s a military coup, which seems imprudent and not to the advantage of the military, I don’t see Xi being ousted from leadership.

He’s changed the constitution so that he can be president for life, released indoctrination pamphlets, but way more importantly on the ground, has dominated trump publicly and repeatedly, which Chinese people love to see, and the technological infrastructure of China is so rapidly outpacing the rest of the world due to Xi’s directives(400% mediacal tourism increase in the last 5 years, more than double solar energy installation than the other 199 countries combined every year, 25% of global battery energy grid storage added annually in China, BYD destroying Tesla, driverless taxis, delivery drones, wind farms/turbines) that China already looks incredibly futuristic and has no reason to continue advancing.

It’s impossible to know, but i think this move will further strengthen his cult of personality, like removing Hu Jintao physically from the closing ceremony, and that head party and military members won’t want to risk removing Xi from power now for fear of losing this opportunity to completely outpace the US in practically every field while trump is fumbling everything scientific, social, and technological while politically losing almost a century of international goodwill and trust.

2028? Depends on how Xi does. But I can’t see the advantage to any faction in China by throwing away this golden opportunity trump has handed to them.