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One night in November 1969, authorities at a crematorium in the Chinese city of Kaifeng were told that a man who had died of a highly infectious disease should be cremated immediately. The paperwork identified the dead man as Liu Weihuang, an unemployed man. In fact, he was Liu Shaoqi, China's head of state and Mao's chosen successor. Two years later, Lin Biao, Mao's officially codified successor in the Communist Party constitution, fled the country on an airplane that crashed in Mongolia, killing all on board. During the Mao and Deng eras, being chosen successor was the most dangerous position in politics. Deng's first choice, Hu Yaobang, was forced to resign in 1987. His second choice, Zhao Ziyang, spent the last 15 years of his life under house arrest in a courtyard compound in Beijing. The party let him receive visitors but not journalists or foreigners, and they wouldn't even let him play golf in the capital, since most of the people on the Beijing courses were foreigners. The only would-be successor who survived his first power struggle did so with the help of the military. A month after Mao's death in 1976, the faction of Hua Guofeng tricked his rivals into attending a phony meeting to review the proofs of Mao's writings, at which point security forces arrested them one by one; one report said it took just 35 minutes. Marshal Ye Jianying, the senior figure on the military commission, sat in the hall. Yet within five years, Hua was ousted by Deng Xiaoping, a former civil war army leader. Mr. Xi's solution has been to pick nobody. He is 73 years old; the party's last big meeting before the congress next year did not mention a successor; and all members of the Politburo were born in or before 1964. There is nobody in their 50s being prepared for the job. He has also purged the military. Of the six generals he appointed to the Central Military Commission, which oversees China's armed forces, in 2022, he has expelled five. These purges included Zhang Youxia, his top general, whose father fought alongside Mr. Xi's father in the civil war. There are now only two members of the commission: Mr. Xi, and the officer who ran the investigations. In the party, Mr. Xi is known as the "core," the one supreme leader. Kou Chien-wen, a political scientist in Taipei, explained the problem: When a named heir is chosen, they become a second center of power, and "there is only one core." So for now, there is no heir to destroy, and no general senior enough to destroy one. This makes Mr. Xi safe. But Hua was saved because generals backed him, and they are the ones Mr. Xi has now removed. Whoever succeeds him will find that nobody at the very top of the military is on their side.