The Beijing rumour mill – less than meets the eye

Another hour, another crop of rumours about - take your pick

• A leftist coup against the Chinese leadership
• Shooting in the leadership compound beside the Forbidden City
• Tank movement on Beijing’s main avenue
• The demotion of the Politburo member responsible for security
• A link between the crash of a Ferrari on one fo the capital’s ring roads and the fall of Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing boss

On the edge? In a country where the leadership always seeks to clamp down on the flow of free information, there is, of course, abundant room for rumours, augmented by the explosive growth of social media. The fall of Box Xilai from his post in Chongqing last week after the drama that erupted round his demoted police chief, Wang Lijun, was bound to set off a new flurry of speculation which gravitated through micro-blog and web sites to claim half a page in the Financial Times on Thursday under a headline informing readers that the rumours had set Beijing “on edge”.

Bo’s fall – he is said to be under house arrest in Beijing while his family are investigated for corruption – is certainly the event of the political year to date, a year in which China moves to the wholesale change in the Party leadership at the Congress to be held probably in October followed by the appointment of a new State President, Prime Minister and Government at the National People’s Conference next March. (For wider thoughts on this see my article)

Nothing stirring on the street. But the rumours appear to be the outcome a hothouse political situation compounded by Internet technology rather than pointing to anything very substantial. They seem to have originated with a couple of bloggers – one in Taiwan - whose postings shot round cyberspace even though residents of the section of Beijing where shooting was said to have occurred heard nothing and the Financial Times itself noted that when its correspondent drove past the leadership compound “all appeared calm and …there was no indication that anything was out of the ordinary.” AS for tank movements, they were in preparation for a military parade.

The main figure in the supposed coup bid was said to be Zhou Yongkang, who runs China’s state security apparatus as a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo and is now depicted as an ally of the fallen Chongqing boss. Taking the rumour mill a stretch further, Zhou was then said to be in trouble in a split at the top of the power structure. He was said to have been put under control by his colleagues and ordered not to make any public appearances or take any high-level meetings. But he appeared in public on Monday at a meeting in Beijing of the Communist Party’s Leading Group on politics and law (though he did not turn up in person for a meeting in Shanghai to which he sent a written statement). He has also been featured this week on the front page of the Party newspaper, People’s Daily. Since Wang Lijun was spirited out of Bo’s control to Beijing by senior officials from the State Security Ministry, which comes into Zhou’s domain, it is hard to see Bo and Zhou acting in cahoots.

So discount the coup rumours. That leaves other major questions, notably about Xi Jinping’s position, which I will deal with in the next posting