Jiang Xueqin
Next Wednesday, President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington DC for a three-day visit. This will be the second of four scheduled meetings between President Xi and President Trump this year, as the two attempt to move away from a relationship of "strategic competition" to "strategic stability."
Xi's visit comes at a time when China is finding itself in crisis. Chinese consumers refuse to spend money, flooding has wreaked havoc across the country, and China begins mass mobilization to prepare for war against a rapidly re-militarizing Japan.
Not helping matters is how this past week alone three major rumors have dominated the Chinese-language Internet. They are (in order of credibility):
- Huawei's Founder Ren Zhengfei has fled China. Huawei leaked military secrets, and Chinese authorities sought to arrest Huawei's first family.
- President Xi Jinping's health is failing. He had a medical emergency in India where he was attending the BRICS summit hosted by Modi. He flew back to China, and was hospitalized. Most believe that the emergency was minor, but there are some who believed he suffered a mini-stroke.
- Bo Xilai has escaped prison. He is President Xi's more charismatic and even more ambitious political rival, and he has been imprisoned since 2013 after failing to seize power in a coup d'etat. He is currently the only one capable of stealing the throne from Xi, and he has found refuge in southwest China, where the military divisions stationed there are in open defiance of Beijing.
These rumors come at a sensitive time in Chinese politics, and the next year may define China's next twenty years. Next autumn, the Chinese Communist Party will convene the 21st National Congress to decide its top leadership, and Xi wants to secure a fourth term. That is perhaps why these rumors are not just allowed to spread - they're also being amplified across the Chinese-language Internet and beyond.
