My TakeWestern media left breathless over Hu’s exit

For many party elders, sitting through China’s party congress can be a physical endurance test. Going through long sessions and party rituals is not anyone’s idea of fun, especially when you are not in the best of health. It appeared 79-year-old Hu Jintao, the former president, couldn’t keep up till the end.

Visibly frail, he was helped out. Well, not according to many Western reports. Here’s a breathless commentary from the ever-objective BBC, practically suggesting a mini-purge.

“There are a lot of questions and no answers so far from the Chinese government,” it said. “The two most likely reasons for his departure are that it was either part of China’s power politics on full display, with a leader representing a former time being symbolically removed, or that Hu Jintao has serious health problems.”

The BBC and likewise Canada’s Globe and Mail have described the incident as Hu’s “mysterious exit”.

I am no professional sinologist but I think that of the two possibilities suggested, only one was likely. But that’s the way the mainstream media have been reporting on the now-closed party congress. If nothing happened, it was described as “carefully scripted” or “highly choreographed”. If something unexpected occurred, however minor, reporters and commentators went to town with wild speculations.

There was supposed to be a news blackout on the incident, according to some reports. The Telegraph claimed: “Hu’s departure was left unexplained, and the nation’s censors appeared to scrub any recent references to him from the internet.”