Chinas culture of secrecy makes Xis disappearance especially dramatic Xi Jinping,the man presumed to be the next leader of the Communist Party of China,has been missing in action for over 10 days. Xi has blown off meetings with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,Singapores prime minister,and then a previously announced appointment with the Danish premier. When a newspaper ran a picture of him at a school event,it was discovered to be a September 1 picture,the last time Xi was seen in public. The air is thick with rumours he had a back injury; he has some other unspecified but minor illness; he had a heart attack; his political future is in jeopardy,ahead of the formal transition expected at the 18th Communist Party Congress. The date for that event has also been left vague,and this mystery over Xi comes at a time when the entire party leadership has been rattled by the Bo Xilai scandal. He may indeed be out of sight for an entirely banal reason,but it assumes greater drama because of Chinas entrenched protocols of secrecy. The communist partys deliberate uncommunicativeness has historically created a fog of conjecture and speculation. This information control is what makes China so supremely confusing to the rest of the world. There is a gulf of misunderstanding between China and its neighbours as well as the West,who are rarely given an insight into the rationale behind its moves. Matters about the party elite are especially opaque,even to the Chinese public. For instance,when Mao Zedongs protege and challenger Lin Biao disappeared en route to the Soviet Union,in a plane crash over Mongolia,the official explanation was unconvincing even then. Chinas own history is bewildering and evasively told to its citizens the shaping circumstances of events like the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution have not been opened up to inquiry. The tantalising question brought up by Xi Jinpings absence,though,is: how long can China sustain this culture of opacity?
