of speculation as to why Xi Jinping, the current vice-president and
president-in-waiting, has gone unseen for more than a week.
During that span, Xi cancelled meetings with visiting foreign
dignitaries including US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. On Monday, it was the Danish
prime minister's turn.
A scheduled photo session with visiting Danish Prime Minister Helle
Thorning-Schmidt, which the media were asked to cover, was taken off
the programme.
Thorning-Schmidt is also due to meet with Vice-Premier Wang Qishan on
Monday and Premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday.
The foreign ministry claimed the Xi-Thorning-Schmidt meeting was never
intended to take place.
"As I said last week, China's state councillors will meet the Danish
prime minister," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said. When asked
about the rumours of an injury, Hong said "we have told everybody
everything," and refused to elaborate.
Rumours about Xi were churned further by Russian President Vladimir
Putin's cryptic remark over the weekend that the start of the Asia
Pacific Economic Co-operation forum leaders' meeting in Vladivostok
had been delayed because Hu needed to attend to an important but
unspecified domestic issue.
Xi's whereabouts during this sudden absence from the spotlight may
never be known. One thing, however, is certain: China may now be a
linchpin of the global economy and a force in international diplomacy,
but the lives of its leaders remain an utter mystery to its 1.3
billion people, its politics an unfathomable black hole.
"There is a longstanding practice of not reporting on illnesses or
troubles within the elites," said Scott Kennedy, director of Indiana
University's Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business in
Beijing. "The sense is that giving out such information would only
fuel further speculation."
Wang Xiangwei, editor-in-chief of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post
and a longtime state media insider, wrote on Monday in his newspaper
that Chinese leaders' meetings are planned well in advance and
cancelations are extremely rare.
"Baring Xi himself offering a very unlikely explanation today about
his cancelled meetings last week, the outside world may never know the
exact reason, and the rumours are unlikely to fade away," Wang wrote.
Though absent in person, Xi did pop up Monday on the front page of the
party academy's official newspaper Study Times alongside a transcript
of the speech he delivered nine days earlier.
In the text, he enjoins newly enrolled cadres to use their time on the
leafy campus in the northern Beijing suburbs to think critically about
major national issues and not spend it "expanding personal contacts
and inviting guests to dinner."