Just some free "what if" thinking, none of which may hold water:

At the plenum Xi did not get what he wanted. His revenge was to take pre-agreed candidates of "the opposition" off the list for whatever Politbureau position. That may have been what Hu Jintao was surprised about when looking at the list and he had to be removed from the event. But why was he the only one surprised?

Those who were removed from pre-agreed the list of positions in the party were out effective immediately, but they are still in their positions in the State Council until the NPC in March.

Last weekend protest posts on Weixin were staying up much longer than usual. Of course censors were overworked, flood of posts and whatever excuse one may think of. But what if the censors were told to be overworked and allowed to slack a bit?

Can it be that "the opposition" is exposing Xi to the ire of the people for bad COVID decisions?

The one thing that certainly all participants in this whatever-you-may-call-it will agree to is that the infallable CCP cannot have failed, it must have been the error of a small group or a single person, if the 0-COVID policy should turn out to have been wrong.

Are we perhaps witnessing internal struggle here?

Just free thinking.