Given the details mentioned (9 guard deaths) the "unconfirmed reports" is probably referring to the x post[1] mentioned in the peoplenewstoday.com article. Personally word not somehow getting out of dozens of people being shot seems hard to believe, though not impossible.

[1]https://x.com/ShengXue_ca/status/2015122407736963455

The Spectator is 99% opinion pieces. They're not somewhere I'd go for news. It all seems a bit unconfirmed sources. Zhang being purged is confirmed on the BBC and absolutely everywhere else, along with pointing out that there's been a "clean sweep" of senior PLA staff. The street violence seems a bit less corroborated.

(by contrast, while the Daily Mail is absolutely terrible at opinion and domestic news, they seem to have some capacity left for doing overseas reporting that isn't just wire service, so if they report on overseas events you can be reasonably sure that something like that happened)

It is not. It's a contrarian newspaper, gives some interesting folks a platform, but mostly cranks.

"According to unconfirmed reports...."

The question isn't whether to trust The Spectator, it's whether to trust this unconfirmed, unnamed source.