By populating the Politburo Standing Committee with his old friends ('Xi's frat house'), Xi created an information problem for succession: he lacks personal relationships with the 50-something cohort from which a successor must come, so he will have to rely on his proteges' proteges ('bridge friends'), and because his inner-circle figures don't all like each other, they will jockey to position their own proteges, creating a frothier and more fraught political environment than the third term.