viz.

(Image credit: The New York Times)

With last week’s tempestuous events in the middle east, the subsequent chaos on the U.S. presidential campaign trail, and news of a professional peeping Tom in the south of France, much was lost on the American public concerning the strange and unexplained absence of Xi Jinping, the man in line to be the next president of China. Mr. Xi disappeared completely from public view on September 1^st, leaving only wanting pundits to explain what they thought might be reality. Think about it. Imagine if we lived in an ascendant country and our leader-in-waiting suddenly vanished from the public eye for longer than two weeks. Furthermore, imagine if we lived under a government that lacked any sense of transparency, and under which a freethinking blog post such as this one might warrant imprisonment, all the while the ruling elite might not proffer any explanation concerning our presumptive leader’s whereabouts. We’d be anxious, and the Chinese were last week. Anyways, the reason I bring this event up isn’t to inform the average American about global events (that’s their own responsibility and their newspaper’s job), but rather, I think the whole circus surrounding Xi’s absence provides a unique insight into the ways that China’s ruling elite attempt to visualize their control.

To give some sense of what the Chinese political machine was up against, it might be fun to quickly round up some of last week’s speculative headlines concerning Mr. Xi. On Tuesday, Jeremy Page reported in The Wall Street Journal that Xi was most likely suffering from “a back injury or a bout of illness.” On Wednesday, Malcolm Moore of the British daily The Telegraph reported that Xi had had a stroke. And by Thursday, The New York Times was reporting with some certainty that Xi had had a myocardial infarction. Later on Thursday, Mr. Xi’s nearly reappeared in the Chinese press when he made public condolences for some party members who passed away. This was the first mention of Mr. Xi in over two weeks, even though there was still no evidence of his existence. What gives? Xi Jinping is 59-years old, and it must be said that heart issues are not untypical of folks near that age. What is Beijing afraid of compromising with news that their future leader might be sick?

The article above was released on Thursday when Mr. Xi made his condolences.

(Image credit: http://www.gx.chinanews.com)

Xi Jinping reappeared in public for the first time in two weeks on Saturday, and he did nothing more than attend activities at China Agricultural University to mark this year’s National Science Popularization Day, according to the state news agency Xinhua. Xi made no comments at the event, and no explanation for the absence has been given since. I suspect that China’s Communist Party is determined to appear stolid throughout this issue for a couple of reasons. First, many of the news organs cited above have also frequently mentioned the fact that China’s Communist Party is currently rife with strife. Various factions within the Communist Party are competing to shape the party according to their wants, and this is clearly not something they’d like discussed. So, perhaps China’s determined to remain strong despite the fact that their future leader might be feeling quite the opposite. Secondly, in the Party’s dealings with public intellectuals such as Ai Weiwei (which I’ve posted about previously), they’ve at times appeared insecure about the stability of a modern Chinese state. They must know that they’re a rich minority when compared their 1.3 billion countrymen, and so an appearance of stability is probably meant to maintain their balancing act. In any case, it’s certainly auspicious that Xi Jinping’s already dealing with public relations questions before his term has even started. I suspect China will change greatly over the course of his presidency, and it’ll be interesting to see how the Communist Party adapts its image to cover the aspirations of a growing middle class.