China-Watching Means Watching China’s President Xi for Signs of Ill Health as He Arrives for Summit with Trump

All eyes are on every move of Communist China’s President Xi Jinpeng as he and his wife Peng Liyuan endure the grueling pomp and circumstance of summitry with President Trump. That’s because his host, and everyone else with any interest in Sino-American relations, want to know how the Chinese leader is doing — not so much politically as medically and physically.Presumably attended by a team of China’s best doctors, Mr. Xi vanished from view after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had done orating at a high-level gathering in New Delhi and failed to show at the farewell dinner. So what happened to the 73-year-old Chinese president? Was he just exhausted from too much summitry?The mystery deepened as the Chinese press remained silent on his activities until Monday when China’s state news agency, Xinhua, put out a one-sentence item saying he would be going to Washington to see Mr. Trump for three days this week, arriving Wednesday, diving into crucial talks Thursday and going home Friday. That item might have seemed like non-news since the dates of his visit were well known, but they appeared as almost a bulletin dispelling rumors that he might not be well enough for the summit.With no comment from him and no news on his whereabouts until his departure for Washington, seeing is believing. Mr. Xi will be scrutinized just as much as Mr. Trump, at 80, seven years his senior, for any sign of a faltering hand grip, a slightly hesitant walk, a slurred word. The sight of his left arm and shoulder looking a little stiff in photographs gave rise to rumors that he may have suffered a mini-stroke while in New Delhi, but there’s totally no substantiation.“The Chinese dictatorship is not famous for its rules of transparency,” the long-time China expert at the American Enterprise Institute, Nick Eberstadt, told The New York Sun. He cautioned against accepting reports that Mr. Xi may be incapacitated — or just not feeling well. “There are times,” he noted, “when the supreme leader disappears from the public and then comes back.”Xinhua, since reporting that Mr. Xi would be going to Washington, has been putting out commentaries giving the impression that he knows just what he’s going to say. The tone has been upbeat, as if hard feelings about tariffs and military exercises and security risks might just vanish in his talks with Mr. Trump.“More than a decade on, the world’s most important bilateral relationship has followed a bumpy course,” said one Xinhua commentary. “How Beijing and Washington manage ties — and find room to work together — is increasingly consequential for both countries and the world.”Xinhua’s commentary was a response not just to tariffs but other attempts, including sanctions, to reduce China’s yawning trade surplus with just about all its trading partners, notably America. The words,“There is no winner in a trade war,” have become a slogan for Mr. Xi and his team.The Chinese Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily seemed if anything more upbeat. “Together, the two sides will explore the right way for major countries to coexist in the new era,” it predicted.“Positive stability, with cooperation as the mainstay, rejects the logic of confrontation and puts cooperation at the forefront,” it said. “The new vision reflects the strategic foresight of China and the United States in understanding the evolution of their bilateral relationship, their profound insight into the underlying laws of history, and their sense of responsibility as major countries to the international community.”Those highfalutin words suggest the tone of Mr. Xi’s remarks, however he’s feeling and whatever deals he and Mr. Trump are likely to make in talks where the outcome may have already been scripted in advance.Rumors about Xi Jinping’s health are constant,” the China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Scott Kennedy, told the Sun, “so I tend to discount them.”Besides Mr. Xi’s health, certain other topics are taboo – and for that reason may not come up during the summit or at least will be glossed over. One is Free Taiwan, the island enclave that’s technically a Chinese province but otherwise independent and self-governing. The other is human rights, which Mr. Xi is often accused of trampling, jailing critics and dissidents while tightening his own grip on power.China’s ambassador to Washington, Xie Feng laid out the rules on those topics in a commentary in People’s Daily, quoted by Reuters. “China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests cannot be violated,” he wrote, “and four red lines — the Taiwan question, democracy and human rights, development paths and systems, and development rights — cannot be challenged.”

China-Watching Means Watching China’s President Xi for Signs of Ill Health as He Arrives for Summit with Trump

China-Watching Means Watching China’s President Xi for Signs of Ill Health as He Arrives for Summit with Trump

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