China: Disappearance of Xi Jinping

Health issue, car crash, a mild heart attack, an assassination plot – were the immediate speculations over the recent close to two-weeks' disappearance of a high ranking politician of Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping. The sudden absence of Xi, who is also the Vice President of China, the top-ranked member of the Central Secretariat of the Communist Party and Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission, grabbed attention worldwide. It became more peculiar as the event took place on the eve of an announcement of him taking over the reins of the Chinese Communist party sometime this year. Xi is also expected to be the President of China replacing Hu Jintao in 2013. Speculation further crept in when Bo Xilai, who was expected to be among the top leaders under his leadership, was named as one of the accused in a murder case with Bo's wife Gu Kailai getting a suspended death sentence for the same. In the first week of September 2012, just before his disappearance, Xi had even cancelled his meeting with the visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the last minute.

For the two weeks that Xi disappeared, neither did the Party release any official statement, nor was there any confirmation of Xi's whereabouts from primary sources. In other words, if Xi was supposed to be the man who'd lead China in a few years, the two weeks' mysterious silence from the Communist Party gave no clue to that. Of course, Xi reappeared on September 14/15, and a Communist Party source, Tung Chee-hwa, strategically 'revealed' to CNN that Xi's disappearance had only been because he had hurt his back, "from swimming". Either the Communist Party has already decided Xi is not going to be promoted as the party leader, or they've employed a really insipid PR manager. It doesn't take a genius to realize that if the issue was so simple as a back problem, then the same could have been revealed two weeks back than give a bad start to Xi's global PR campaign. And if the issue was something graver than a back problem? Well, tell the world anything, but tell it – the man in question is going to be the head of your party. Unfortunately, hiding information about top level leaders is quite common in China and can only lead to massively negative PR. When the Hong Kong media report confirmed the death of Jiang Zemin, the former president, the Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency invalidated it terming it a ‘pure rumour.’

A Washington Post article described Xi as a “pragmatic, serious, cautious, hard-working, down to earth and low-key person". It's about time he looked after his own PR properly... and his back too.