October Just Got a Big Date on the Calendar

A fresh red circle just landed on October's calendar. The Party's 20th Central Committee has penciled in its fifth plenary session for the fall, and the whole apparatus is quietly clicking into gear.

The Politburo went first, spreading the current economic picture across the table like a half-finished puzzle — comparing pieces, lining up the second-half to-do list with no shortage of furrowed brows.

No dress rehearsal, no rolling script. Yet every line item drifts, eventually, into somebody's breakfast nook. That's the quiet twist of these big meetings: they feel distant until, suddenly, they don't.