Rumours around the Politburo

Seriously questionable

Sep 11th 2012, 10:46 by T.P. | BEIJING

"I HOPE you will raise serious questions."

This was the reply a spokesman for the foreign ministry, Hong Lei, gave on Tuesday afternoon at a press briefing in Beijing. His answer struck many of the reporters who had gathered for a regular daily session as rather odd, given that the question he had been asked seemed anything but frivolous. It was from a foreign reporter who, after noting accurately that Xi Jinping's disappearance from public view in recent days had prompted many rumours, asked whether it was related to any instability within the Chinese government, and indeed whether Mr Xi was still alive.

A clear answer as to Mr Xi's whereabouts or condition would have put the matter quickly to rest. But no such answer was forthcoming. Asked moments earlier whether Mr Xi had been injured or whether he was "fit and well", Mr Hong replied tersely, "I have no information on that to provide to you."

And with that Mr Hong was done. Reporters were not, but to all subsequent questions on the topic, Mr Hong replied simply that he had already answered.

Questions do linger, and not only about Mr Xi's health. That in itself is of course a matter of great import. He is currently China's vice president, looks a bullish 59 years old, and has been groomed as the man who in coming months will replace Hu Jintao, the outgoing president and Communist Party chief, to lead China for the next ten years.

Beyond the immediate questions about Mr Xi's physical and political well-being loom other disturbing questions about the widening mismatch between China's Leninist politics and black-box opacity on the one hand, and its growing economic and political importance on the other.

Last week, when Mr Xi cancelled a scheduled meeting with America's visiting secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, it seemed possible that it was a snub designed to express dissatisfaction over policy disputes. But taking into account a meeting with the prime minister with Singapore, which was also cancelled, his non-appearance at a meeting with the Danish prime minister, where at least some people had expected him, and then another one that went by the board entirely―between Mr Xi and a Russian official―speculation ran wild in some of Hong Kong's and Taiwan's more freewheeling news outlets. An official account of a Central Military Commission session held on September 8th to discuss the earthquakes in Guizhou and Yunnan did not show him in attendance, though he is the CMC's vice chairman. China's information commissars responded to all this not with clearer explanations, but by blocking related search terms on the internet.

Among the tales spun from these mills were reports that Mr Xi had injured his back (while swimming or playing football―take your pick). Or that he had suffered a stroke. Or a heart attack (mild or severe―again, take your pick). Or that he was injured in a politically motivated attack while in his car. Or that he has merely been sidelined politically in last-minute manoeuvring in the delicate political transition process that is now under way.

These rumours bear repeating not because any have been reported with anything like corroborating information, but because they illustrate the nature of the information vacuum that China's system produces, and the nature of what rushes in to fill it.

In the early 1980s, Soviet government spokesman drew ridicule every time they tried to explain away the prolonged disappearance of one of the USSR's frail and elderly leaders. They tended to say that Yuri Andropov or Konstantin Chernenko had a cold. It was laughable, but also disconcerting for the rest of the world to be left in the dark as to who was running one of the world's two nuclear-armed superpowers.

China is not only a nuclear-armed superpower today but also an economic and industrial behemoth. In a world where events and information move so much faster than they did in the days of Yuri Andropov and his head colds, simple questions about the condition and the whereabouts of a top leader deserve to be taken seriously.

(Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons, AFP)