Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, for two weeks at the center of a media event triggered by his absence from public life, "will participate in the China-ASEAN trade summit." According to the regime news agency Xinhua, "Xi will attend the opening ceremony of the summit and other related important activities. All this will take place at the end of the month in the southern city of Nanning."
Xi Jinping resurfaced in public last September 15 at the Chinese University of Agriculture: here he participated in the National Day for the diffusion of science. Considered the president-in-waiting of Communist China, Xi had disappeared from 1st September, when, without any explanation he canceled four high level international meetings and up to September 13 - the date on which he was mentioned in an article on the death a Maoist general - was even given up for dead.
His absence sparked an outbreak of rumors. Xi, together with Li Keqiang (who many say will be his prime minister), is tipped to take over from Hu Jintao to lead the country and the Party. This change of leadership should take place during the next Communist Congress in October although the exact date has not yet been announced.
What now seems clear is that Xi was hospitalized. His sudden disappearance and the fact that a military hospital in Beijing was guarded by the armed forces gives substance to this hypothesis. According to various rumors he has a "minor" back condition, but the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, based in Hong Kong said, on September 2, he was diagnosed with the first stages of liver cancer.
His disappearance triggered wild assumptions and suspicions ahead of the Communist Party Congress. Among other things, the date of this important event has not yet been set.
Since Jiang Zemin, every five years (two terms) the party has elected the president, the prime minister and members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the "nine mandarins" who actually hold the reins of power. During the General Congress all the places of power are assigned, and for this reason the various factions that animate the Party are fighting with each other to ensure the largest available slice of power. The Chinese call these rotations "generations", and the one that will start in October is the fifth.
