China’s President Xi Jinping attends a meeting with Russian President on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) leaders’ summit in Samarkand on September 15, 2022. (Photo by ALEXANDR DEMYANCHUK/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
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Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping made his first public appearance in nearly two weeks, terminating an absence that fueled a storm of unsubstantiated rumors regarding his whereabouts.
Xi, who leads China as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), visited an exhibition in Beijing on Sept. 27, according to Chinese state-owned media.
The event was Xi’s first public appearance since returning to China from a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan earlier in the month.
Xi had met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an unofficial ally, during that summit. The two leaders reaffirmed their nations’ support for one another in the face of mounting resistance from the West regarding China’s plans for Taiwan and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“The Chinese side is willing to work with the Russian side to continuously implement high-level strategic cooperation between the two countries, safeguard common interests, and promote the development of the international order in a more just and reasonable direction,” said CCP Politburo member Yang Jiechi in the lead-up to the meeting.
The trip was also Xi’s first excursion out of China since the COVID-19 pandemic began two years ago, and his subsequent disappearance upon returning to China spurred a maelstrom of rumors online.
Numerous Indian news outlets and pundits published unsubstantiated claims that Xi had been deposed by the Chinese military and placed under house arrest over the weekend. By Sept. 24, “Xi” was a top-trending topic on Twitter. His name appeared on hashtags more than 42,000 times, and the term “China coup” circulated more than 9,300 times.
Author and China expert Gordon Chang said that, despite the unsubstantiated nature of the claims, the unusual nature of Xi’s disappearance and continued irregularities in travel schedules within China pointed to some sort of intrigue within the upper echelons of CCP leadership.
“The lack of news from China over the last few hours suggests coup rumors are untrue, but whatever happened inside the Chinese military during the last three days—evidently something unusual occurred—tells us there is turbulence inside the senior CCP leadership,” Chang said in a tweet.
However, veteran journalist and China watcher Bill Gertz suggested that the misinformation could be a ploy designed to be used by intelligence agencies in China or elsewhere to monitor nations’ crisis response protocols.
“Setting off rumors of a coup against Xi Jinping in China would be an excellent way for an electronic spy service, E[ast] or W[est], to collect valuable intel on various governments’ crisis communications,” Gertz said in a tweet. “I bet watch teams are lit up tonight.”
Xi is expected to secure an unprecedented third term as CCP leader during the Party’s five-year congress in October.