Apologies for the late newsletter today, the Internet outage here delayed things. Xi chaired a Politburo meeting Monday. The publicly announced topics discussed were regulations on institutional staffing and Party work in rural governance. There was no mention in the official Politburo readout of a schedule for the 4th Plenum, so I would not expect one in July. Given the annual Beidaihe shindig in August it will probably not be held that month either. So if there is to be a 4th Plenum this year September is probably the earliest date. If that is the case they would have gone 18 months or so between Plenums. When was the last time the gap was so long?