Lately many people have been talking about the CCP's "garbage time." What is the CCP's "garbage time"? It simply means that disaster is looming — that the CCP has fallen into a grave crisis bringing it to the brink of extinction. This crisis did not just begin recently; it started long ago. So exactly when did the CCP enter its "garbage time"? In my view, the CCP's "garbage time" began at the 18th Party Congress, and it clearly accelerated after the 19th Party Congress. Does everyone remember? After the 18th Congress, the CCP's "reform and opening up" survived in name only, and the whole of China began rapidly regressing toward the Mao era. This was the mark of the CCP's entry into "garbage time." When Xi Jinping first became General Secretary, his position was not yet secure during his first term, so he mainly used the anti-corruption campaign to purge political rivals and strike at the Jiang faction and the Youth League faction. By the 19th Congress, he had clearly consolidated his footing, which is why he broke with precedent and pushed through the constitutional amendment abolishing term limits on the state presidency. As the Party's "overall leadership" was strengthened, speech was ever more harshly controlled, the state advanced while the private sector retreated, the "dual circulation" strategy took hold, and "dynamic zero-COVID" was imposed, the CCP quickly fell into an unprecedented crisis, with the economy in particular declining sharply and struggling to recover. Under these broad conditions, almost every stratum of society has hoped that the CCP would hit the brakes and turn the wheel around. Looking back at history, the CCP faced disaster once before, in the Mao era. During the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, the national economy was pushed to the brink of collapse, the people were destitute, and CCP rule teetered on the edge. After Mao died, his successors, in order to rescue the Party from crisis, made sweeping adjustments to the line and policies of the Mao era: they not only ended the Cultural Revolution and redressed a huge number of unjust and wrongly decided cases, but replaced "class struggle as the key link" with economic development as the central task, and pressed the button to launch "reform and opening up." China's economy recovered as a result, and after joining the WTO in the 21st century it entered a period of rapid growth — the CCP finally managed, if only by luck, to climb out of the crisis that followed the Cultural Revolution. Now, decades after reform and opening up, the CCP faces disaster once again — and this crisis is even more severe than the last one. So this time, can the CCP escape? Can it replay the scene of turning crisis around the way it did after the Cultural Revolution? I believe that possibility no longer exists. Why does this possibility no longer exist? In the Mao era, the CCP faced disaster mainly because of Mao Zedong's personal dictatorship. After the Cultural Revolution, the reason the CCP escaped death was that Mao died, the Party's leadership core changed, Mao's ultra-leftist line was terminated, and so-called "reform and opening up" began. The reason the CCP has once again faced disaster since the 18th Congress, apart from systemic causes, is clearly inseparable from the series of policies implemented by Party leader Xi Jinping. To turn things around would require fundamentally repudiating these policies — but repudiating them would be equivalent to repudiating the Party leader's authority. Would Xi Jinping agree to that? Of course he would not. And if Xi will not agree, the only alternative would be some force within the Party capable of bringing him down. But does such a force exist? At least for now, none is visible. So as long as Xi Jinping remains Party leader, the CCP obviously cannot fundamentally change its past policies — at most it can only tinker with them at the margins. Given that, how could the CCP's mortal crisis possibly be reversed? It absolutely cannot. Since last year, as the economic situation has continued to deteriorate, people have widely pinned their hopes on this year's Third Plenum, hoping the CCP would carry out a deep readjustment of the policies pursued since the 18th Congress and roll out major measures to rescue the economy. Ahead of this meeting, the CCP notably raised its rhetoric on reform, claiming it would further and comprehensively deepen reform. Party leader Xi Jinping even invited the market-oriented reform economist Zhou Qiren to a forum held to build momentum for the Third Plenum. But what was the result? Although the Third Plenum passed a "Resolution on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese-Style Modernization," people discovered that this meeting was in no way a genuine session of further, comprehensive deepening of reform — it was instead a meeting that flew the banner of reform while opposing reform and pushing further regression. The sprawling "Resolution" offered not a single major measure that gave people any hope of arresting the economy's precipitous decline. This makes clear one thing about the Third Plenum: the CCP has completely lost the capacity for self-correction and self-adjustment — or rather, the CCP is simply unwilling to face reality and adjust itself. Once things have reached this point, is there still any possibility of reversing the CCP's crisis? Of course, that possibility, too, is completely gone. To put it another way: even if Xi Jinping were to step down due to illness or some other reason and a new General Secretary took over, there is no longer anyone within today's CCP capable of turning the crisis around, nor could such a figure possibly emerge. History, naturally, cannot repeat itself. All that awaits the CCP is disintegration and collapse.