I tried to look into this a little more and it is not totally clear this is due to pro/anti-US factionalism in any way. It looks more like loss of confidence due to recent political outcomes. What recent major political outcomes are there to judge? The most impactful one would be Vietnam's trade negotiations with the US. It's unclear what Vietnam may have had to secretly negotiate away to get their trade deal. If they did so without full buy-in from their party leadership, that may explain why they have now been removed from power. The removal from power is likely an internal veto against the negotiated trade deal with the US. My understanding is that the senior party leadership have decisively swung to maintaining a good relationship with China, so if the trade deal secretly includes provisions that go against that hard line (such as supporting or turning a blind eye to US military/intelligence operations against China), then that would explain why this all happened. In any case, it is public knowledge that the US trade negotiations with other countries mostly required them to turn against China economically, politically, and militarily, so this all adds up.How do you know the ones purged were pro US ?
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