Is all well with China’s Xi Jinping, ask netizens as Beijing cancels 6000 domestic, international flights

New Delhi: Soon after Beijing airport cancelled a whopping 6,000 domestic as well as international flights, rumours started circulating on the Internet that perhaps Chinese President Xi Jinping had been placed under house arrest. It did not help matters that over the past two years, Xi had rarely stepped out of his presidential palace, sometimes only to meet top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He did not meet any global leader during this time citing Covid-19 concerns. After a hiatus of two years due to the raging Covid-19 pandemic, the Chinese President recently attended the 22nd summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), held this time in Uzbekistan. Strangely, however, despite being a founding member of the eight-nation influential grouping, Xi Jinping maintained a relatively low profile. He attended the summit, no doubt, but he did not indulge in one-to-one meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin nor with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It can be safely said that although he was there at the SCO meet, he did not actively take part in the summit and left rather abruptly. Not to be left behind in their quest to be well-informed, netizens started wondering on social media on Saturday whether Xi had indeed been placed under house arrest in a coup by the CCP. According to News Highland Vision, former Chinese President Hu Jintao and former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao may have persuaded Song Ping, the former member of the Standing Committee and retaken control of the Central Guard Bureau (CGB). The job of the CGB, for those uninitiated, happens to be to provide personal protection to members of China’s Politburo Standing Committee and other CCP leaders. The committee is solely responsible for the protection of Xi Jinping. It is being speculated within the state-run Chinese media and social media that Xi Jinping’s military authority may have been clipped for now in what could well be an internal coup within the Communist party. Xi hurriedly left the SCO meet on 16 September after perhaps getting an inkling of things to come in China. He skipped his informal dinner with the Russian President once again citing Covid-19 concerns. Local reports suggested that Xi was worried about something back home in China and did not even wait for the SCO summit to be officially declared over before he left for his country. On his arrival, the Chinese President was detained at the airport and is believed to be currently under house arrest in Zhongnanhai’s house. With domestic and international flights in and out of China being scrapped for the time being, a stay put on the sale of tickets too and the CCP monitoring traffic in and out of China, the coup to remove Xi Jinping, if it has taken place may well turn out to be the biggest news emerging out of that country since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.