Is Xi Jinping’s Health Declining?

When Xi Jinping, the leader of China, came to the White House last month, there was a lot of pomp and circumstance. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington this evening for his first state visit in more than a decade. A band played as Xi got off his airplane. President Trump himself greeted the leader on a red carpet laid along the tarmac. President Trump chomped to joint base Andrews this afternoon to greet Chinese President Xi Jinping. There was a 21 gun salute and a flyover of jet fighters. The schedule included a summit between Xi and Trump in a full state dinner. And right away, our colleague Ling Lingwei noticed something unusual when she was getting off the plane with his wife, Pung Li Yuan. And Xi Jinping was descending the stairs from his plane at joint base Andrews. He reached for Pung Li Yuan's hand while gripping the rail with the other hand. It's not unusual for Xi Jinping to hold his wife's hand. What is unusual was the way he held her hand this time. It was pretty obvious he was leaning on her for physical support. It happened again on Xi's last day in DC. He, his wife, and the President and First Lady started going up the granite stairs to the National Archive when Xi gripped his wife's hand again. The signs were subtle, but Ling Ling said those details are noteworthy because they raised questions about Xi's health and what his potential decline could mean for the country. Chinese officials haven't said anything publicly about Xi's wellness. Many analysts have cautioned against reading too much into a stiff gate or a slow step. What isn't in dispute is that Xi Jinping is 73 years old. He's well-being is an issue of huge consequences, not just for China, but for the rest of the world precisely because he has removed the term limits and the in theory he can rule China for life. Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Imani Moellese. It's Tuesday, October 6th. Coming up on the show, the secrecy around Xi Jinping's health. Ling Ling started paying attention to Xi's health about a month ago when he took a high-profile trip to India. He was there to meet with world leaders from Russia, Brazil, and other nations. Chinese President Xi Jinping is heading to New Delhi this weekend for the Brick Summit, his first visit to India in nearly seven years. Before the trip, Xi Jinping had accepted invitation from Prime Minister Modi to attend a Gala dinner, but he canceled that dinner at the last minute. Our reporting showed that the reason was that Xi Jinping wasn't feeling well. But you don't skip a dinner like that, you know, with Putin and other war leaders seeing attendance, unless something is really off. So that episode really set off a avalanche of questions among diplomats and policymakers around the world. Those questions continued on Xi's trip to Washington in September. This trip was his first state visit to the White House in over a decade, and the countries had a lot to hash out. As Xi's range from trade to the race over artificial intelligence, to China's relationship with Taiwan, and its links to Iran. Against that backdrop, Xi's schedule during his visit was surprisingly light. The night he arrived, his delegation didn't arrange any activities for the leader. And his agenda for the next day was also sparse. The Chinese team declined a working lunch for President Xi Jinping with President Trump asking instead for more rest time. The result was a roughly five hour gap in the summit agenda, which was quite remarkable long stretch of downtime during a visit that lasted barely two days. That meant Xi's summit with Trump was only about two hours total. Trump, who's 80, is also known to schedule breaks during foreign state visits. According to Ling Ling's reporting, behind the scenes in DC, Xi's team was building a meticulous schedule around how long he could stand, how far he could walk, and when he would need to stop. So what really was interesting was what our reporting uncovered. Chinese officials requested a private hold room inside the West Wing. This private room was for Xi to take breaks between events. An only Xi Jinping and his wife were permitted to use the private hold room, not even his chief of staff. They wanted to minimize any exposure of whatever was happening inside the room. So why was this hold room so significant? Has something like this happened before at the White House? Based on reporting, we talked to a lot of officials who have been robbed in organizing leaders' summits. This kind of exclusive hold room inside the White House is quite unprecedented. So if you compare this visit to more than a decade ago in 2015, when Xi Jinping paid state visit to Washington, I was during President Obama's time, both presidents had a long private meal together before their scheduled summit in the next day. We were told by former officials involved. The Chinese team certainly asked for a private room for Xi and other Chinese officials to huddle to talk about things, but that room wasn't just exclusive for Xi himself. So if you do some comparing contrast, this time, the logistic demands from the Chinese side was really notable. Why China and the world are paying attention to Xi Jinping's health? That's next. Over the last two decades, Xi Jinping has centralized power around himself. The Lingling says we don't know the full state of his health. The subtext here is what happens of someday he isn't able to govern. That's partly why all the extra accommodations for Xi and Washington has gotten so much attention. Behind all those logistical details really lies the issue of succession, which is one of the most consequential on answer questions, not only in China but in global affairs. So those scheduling demands really are some of the clearest signals yet of how Beijing is managing the leader whose physical limitations are becoming harder to conceal. So that's why we pay so much attention to how he looks both on camera and off the camera. The media captured some of these moments, like when she reached for his wife's hand to study himself. But in China, those images didn't appear in state media coverage. Those moments were edited out of China's state media coverage, so domestic audience didn't get a chance to see. China has a tradition of keeping the house of its top leaders a state secret. So we haven't seen much reporting coverage at all about Xi Jinping's health or physical conditions overall. Consider the contrast with the United States. When questions arose about President Biden's fitness, our colleagues in Washington reported on it very aggressively, it was debated openly in Congress, in the media, in the public square. The US has a free press that can force the issue, ultimately Biden stepped aside, and the system worked however messy it was. And China has known of that. The house of these top leaders has always been treated as among the most closely guarded state secrets. It is rooted in the Communist Party's belief that any perceived weakness at the top could invite factional challenges or destabilize its grip on power. Over the years, Xi has increasingly consolidated his control over the country. He holds three formal positions. He's a president, he's in charge of the military. and he leaves the Communist Party. Xi Jinping has made himself the chairman of everything in China. He is firmly in control the Chinese military. We have seen over the past year in particular the seemingly never-ending purges in the Chinese military and also in the civilian government. Nearly a week goes by without a senior official gets purged or put under investigation for corruption and other charges. Xi has ousted military commanders civilian bureaucrats and retired provincial party bosses. Xi has said that he is worried about people in the military being "disloyal" to the party. And he has also rendered China's version of the cabinet. The state council almost irrelevant when it comes to running China's economy. Because traditionally in the past few decades it was the state council and the premier who really ran the Chinese economy. But nowadays Xi Jinping is the only one who causes shots. Consolidating his power has meant that Xi has shut out anyone who could take over after him. According to Ling Ling's reporting, Xi's inner circle has become very small. So there are no rising leaders, no one waiting in the wings, no backup. In 1982, China's then leader, Deng Xiaoping, created presidential term limits. The goal was to prevent a return to a Mao-style dictatorship, which had gone on for over two decades. Under those new rules, presidents could only serve two five-year stints. Deng Xiaoping himself recognized the danger when too much power was consolidated into one man's hand. He famously said in 1989, "Building a nation's fate on the reputation of one or two people is very unhealthy and very dangerous." In 2018, Xi abolished those term limits. He's now in his third term. Right now, Xi is in his third term, which is quite unprecedented in modern China history. And it looks very likely that he will continue into his fourth term. So all those things indicate someone, a leader in today's China, who has consolidated power at a level that has been unprecedented. By extending his rule, Xi has effectively reversed those decades-long efforts. This, coupled with all the purges under his leadership, has undermined any clear succession plan. Xi Jinping has concentrated more power than any other Chinese leaders, Xing Zedong. He has designated no successor, and China has no institutionalized process for choosing one. And with no successor inside right now, China is basically back where Deng Xiaoping feared it would be. One men's house determining the fate of the world's second largest economy. And that economy is deeply tied to the rest of the globe. China makes a lot of what the world buys. It dominates the supply of rare earth metals that go into everything from smartphones to fighter jets. If its leadership is thrown into turmoil, the shock could ripple far beyond China's borders. And of course, there would be internal risks to China if she was no longer able to govern. So the real risks could come from what that scenario might set in motion. First, jockeying for power among those officials eager to succeed him, that could lead different factions to advocate aggressive policies to gain an edge in an internal power struggle. And there are also risks that China's ability to respond to an economic, financial, or any other kind of crisis might be severely limited because the guy on the very top might physically be unable to make decisions. And in addition, there could be a paralysis in diplomacy and even international corporation, because no one else in the system has the authority to act in Xi Jinping's place. That's all for today, Tuesday, October 6th. The journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like the show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.