In mid-October, China’s most powerful officials were locked in intense backroom negotiations over who would join the elite Politburo Standing Committee at the upcoming Party Congress. Everyone who was anyone in the Chinese Communist Party was there.  But Wang Qishan, China’s vice president and once one of Xi Jinping’s closest deputies, was in Kazakhstan. Wang Qishan and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, October 13, 2022. Credit: Press Office of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Though it was a seemingly routine diplomatic visit — Wang attended a multilateral Asian security summit and met with the Kazakh president — the timing of the trip seemed ominous. With only a few days to go before the start of the Congress in Beijing, and with stringent Covid quarantine requirements still in place, speculation swirled that Wang — a man who has been near the zenith of power in China for two decades — might not be present at the meeting.  In the W