IN sad but typical Chinese fashion, Deng Xiaoping, according to the official party line, is ''in good health''. According to his daughter, Deng Nan, Mr Deng still expects to visit Hong Kong after it returns to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.
For those, Chinese and non-Chinese alike, who still obey the Dengist maxim to ''seek truth from facts'', that is not the way reality is currently being perceived. For a long time now, there has been a kind of Deng Xiaoping death-watch in that volatile casino, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Speculators have been making - or losing - fortunes for years on the basis of the latest rumour about the declining state of Mr Deng's health.
But now the death-watch fever has gone international. By a curious, almost incredible coincidence, last month both the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times placed the looming transition in China in sharper perspective.
The Los Angeles Times had a front-page story from Washington by China specialist Jim Mann announcing ''Deng Believed Dying; Beijing Transition Seen''.
The New York Times consigned the story to page three, where, over a lengthy report from the paper's Beijing correspondent Nicholas Kristof, the headline posed the question which has been nagging China-watchers for years - ''Who Runs China? Deng's Health Is A Major Issue''.
The utter paucity of hard information on which to base such stories was well-illustrated by Mann, after he had quoted one US China expert as saying flatly that ''Deng is dying''. He then reported that: ''It is not clear how long Deng could last in this weakened state, but estimates range from a few weeks or months to as much as a year.'' So what is going on? The short answer is . . . we do not know. Because we do not know, the first and last short answer to the question ''After Deng, what?'' is . . . turbulence.