This is all crystal ball stuff, but I don't believe passive resistance is what's going on here. There may be pressure on the players to do this, as a first step toward the punishment they "deserve" for policital agitating against a superior's decision ("bringing shame to the face of the nation"). Decommissioning the world #1, #2, #3 while still very much in the public eye, and subjecting them to all kinds of hardness, would be harder (and provide political leverage as well as additional loss of face).
Sacrificing them by betting on the next generation and having them fade out in a way looking like natural demise would be the better way to go about it — and then, when out of the picture, exact the "severe punishments" promised in the shadows.
The really remarkable thing here, to me, is Lin Gaoyuan's underperformance, because he's crucial to the succession story; the plot I sketched can backfire by the failure of the successors to gain prominence. That may be a calculated risk, but somehow I don't think the scenario of the CNT bottoming out entirely has received proper weight in the related considerations.
I know, it's a grim way of thinking about things, and tin foil hat territory. Then again, such developments are the teachings of history…
