What if Xi Jinping is suddenly incapacitated?
Xi's sudden incapacitation opens a CCP succession crisis: VIX spikes globally, China-beta and semis sell on policy-vacuum and Taiwan-tail fears, and the yuan weakens. Closest analogue is the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown that crashed Hong Kong equities and froze the market. Transmission: China is the marginal buyer for global commodities and a core link in tech supply chains, so the shock is global. Forward angle: an opaque, factional CCP transition has no orderly 25th-Amendment equivalent, so the uncertainty premium is stickier than a Western-leader shock.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Xi Jinping suddenly dies or is incapacitated, opening a Chinese succession crisis. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · China growth ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Volatility (VIX) VIXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Vol | ▲ +12.5% hist +4.65–+7.93% · other way +2.39% (n=12) |
| 2 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -4.7% hist -2.7–-1.43% · other way -0.39% (n=12) |
| 3 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -3.2% hist -1.94–-1.08% · other way -0.19% (n=12) |
| 4 | S&P 500 SPXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -2.6% hist -2.03–-0.76% · other way +0.87% (n=12) |
| 5 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.3% hist -1.91–-0.64% · other way +2.34% (n=12) |
| 6 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.88–+1.17% · other way +25.38% (n=12) |
| 7 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +1.4% hist +0.21–+1.47% · other way -0.72% (n=12) |
| 8 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.7% hist -4.19–+0.34% · other way +4.93% (n=12) |
| 9 | Solana SOLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▼ -1.3% hist -10.39–+4.42% · other way -0.62% (n=12) |
| 10 | AMD AMDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.5% hist -3.27–+0.41% · other way +0.68% (n=12) |
| 11 | Broadcom AVGOon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.5% hist -1.29–+0.34% · other way +1.29% (n=12) |
| 12 | Micron MUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.5% hist -5.24–+0.97% · other way +1.25% (n=12) |
| 13 | TSMC TSMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.5% hist -1.78–-0.16% · other way +2.84% (n=12) |
| 14 | Marvell MRVLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.5% hist -2.41–+0.13% · other way +0.88% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade short on MSTR/COIN: +18%/+16% is BTC bull-regime contamination — ASML-miss and Iran windows lifted the proxies +51-69% on unrelated crypto flows, swamping any China-succession risk-off.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 40 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -7.5% · 5d -9.1% | 69% | 25 | 0.32 | ✓ matches cascade |
| NVDA NVDA | SHORT | -3.0% · 5d -3.9% | 69% | 33 | 0.29 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -0.8% · 5d -0.8% | 65% | 33 | 0.24 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CNY CNY | SHORT | -0.4% · 5d -0.2% | 62% | 33 | 0.23 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MU MU | SHORT | -4.1% · 5d -2.4% | 63% | 40 | 0.20 | ✓ matches cascade |
| KWEB KWEB | SHORT | -2.1% · 5d -1.9% | 61% | 31 | 0.20 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CL CL | SHORT | -3.0% · 5d -1.6% | 62% | 33 | 0.20 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AUD AUD | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -0.3% | 62% | 32 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XLF XLF | SHORT | -0.1% · 5d -0.5% | 62% | 33 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| RTX RTX | SHORT | -1.9% · 5d -1.9% | 60% | 40 | 0.18 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d -0.1% | 62% | 32 | 0.17 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AMD AMD | SHORT | -2.3% · 5d -1.3% | 60% | 40 | 0.16 | ✓ matches cascade |
| QCOM QCOM | SHORT | -3.2% · 5d -2.5% | 60% | 38 | 0.16 | ✓ matches cascade |
| TRY TRY | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d +0.5% ↺ fades | 61% | 32 | 0.16 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
Xi (72) sudden death/incapacitation low actuarial base rate over 1-3yr; no known illness. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.