informed source speculates

So, the chief executive designate is missing: Xi Jinping has been off the radar for a week, blowing out various scheduled meetings with foreign dignitaries in the process, including one with Hillary. Much media speculation ensues, often accompanied by condemnation of Beijing’s secretive ways. This opacity is real, but the flag here is that complaints about opacity also reveal that the hacks don’t have much confidence in the stuff they’re actually printing.

Rumours thus far: Xi’s done his back in playing football. Xi’s done his back in swimming. Xi is hunkered down against some late, obscure but deadly challenge from factional rivals. Xi is facing a last minute onslaught from CDIC about the sources of his family’s wealth. Xi has had a mild heart attack. Xi has had a severe heart attack. Xi is recovering from a bomb attack on his limo organised by a PLA officer intent on revenge for the Bo Xilai affair.

Anyway, it’s time I joined in. Here are three alternatives I heard from sources close to Beijing. These sources live in our back bedroom, which is closer to Beijing than the front bedroom, where I’m writing this. They have to remain anonymous because I don’t want Mrs Treasure to know that they live with us and that I feed them when she’s out.

Firstly and most plausibly: heart attack. Xi is a 59 year old man in a demanding but sedentary job that, incidentally, involves lots of banqueting. He is about to be translated to an even more demanding but sedentary job that involves even more banqueting. Some kind of cardiac event in this context is not at all unlikely. Hu Jintao used to cope by using the collective revolutionary will of the Communist Party to transform himself into a reptile. At times of stress his heart rate would drop to near zero and he would remain motionless apart from the odd flick of the tongue. When the crisis passed he would go and lie in the sun to warm up. But this option is not given to all of us.

On the other hand, Xi’s been tapped for the job since 2007: his day to day health will be extensively monitored by battalions of medical staff. All sorts of functionaries will be told off to keep a friendly eye on his behaviour and monitor his comings and goings. This leads us to our second option: the dark night of the soul proceeding from a sudden outburst of executive self pity.

Here I am, he thinks, about to be elevated to Supreme Command: and you know what? The contents of my bowels are a subject of gossip in clinics all over Beijing and when I want a second glass of baijiu some officious medical monkey snatches it from my hands. ‘Oh, no, Comrade Jinping, we all depend on you, we must look after your health, blah-de-blah-de-fucking blah. And that’s it. This is my life from now on.

that's when the dreams start the dreams where I’m running around in crowded streets waving and yelling and tugging sleeves and trying to get people’s attention and tell them what to do but they’re all ignoring me and then they stop ignoring me and they’re all looking at me just looking at me and then they all make a sudden rush and they want something from me but they wont say what and I’m underneath a great pile of them biting and kicking my way upwards and sweating and screaming and there are more of them jumping on the pile and I can’t fight my way out….

And then there’s option three: he’s off in Vegas, having a blast. After all, the boss of bosses’ job is a lot more constrained than it used to be. Mao and old man Deng used to plot and scheme and rejoice in the lamentations of their enemies, but them times ain’t no more. Xi’s got to figure out how to press buttons in the right sequence and pull all sorts of complicated levers and then nothing happens half the time. He’s got to plead, he’s got to wheedle, he’s got to bang heads together and sometimes he’s just got to stand there personifying the nation like he was some kind of fucking Hapsburg. Well, if he’s going to spend ten years doing that he’s going to get some of the old gang together and go off on a stag week to Vegas, cause what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, as master Kong said. Right now, even as we speak, all of China’s dollar holdings are going round and round a roulette wheel: bet on the red, of course.

…or so informed sources close to Beijing tell me.

Comments

[ajay]

I like option three. Politics would be healthier with regular periods of compulsory rumspringa.

[Alex]

He's in the midst of a binge on Barry Freed's patent Tangiers Bug Powder, and has gone all sticky.

[CMcM]

Have we completely ruled out the possibility he's on his way back from France, having botched/successfully pulled off (delete to taste) one last wet operation in the Alps?

[nathan]

He's on mandatory training, but forgot to put it in his electronic diary. When he put the date in it was OK'd but IT was temoporarily down and admin couldn't find the right card to fill in ( Sue on the next desk borrowed it for something ).

When he returns look for any mention of 'the fire triangle' 'if in doubt get out' or word's like 'safeguarding' or anecdotes about how much faecal matter is on the average toilet door handle.

[johnf]

Apparently it was a heart attack:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9539184/Chinas-next-leader-Xi-Jinping-suffered-heart-attack.html

[jamie]

or maybe not: that's a good named source Moore's got, but the stuff about the 301 hospital and the routine of the other top leaders is telling, too. I'm reading that as a kind of virtuoso bit of kremlinology. Still, It's certainly the most likely of the illness scenarios. And aren't those bright red lips supposed to indicate high blood pressure?