Xi Jinping on the front page

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Recently, there has been speculation that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, might be on his way out. One US think tank, for example, writes that “Speculation is growing about a power struggle at the top of the Party” (link) and a professor argues that “this powerful decision-making body [the politburo] is making a veiled threat against Xi for holding on to too much power” (link). An opinion piece in the New York Post recently asked whether “Xi Jinping is on his way out” (link), and Newsweek also discusses the topic here. It’s not all alarmist, of course, and more balanced analyses have been published, too, such as here and here. It’s not new that the global “China watching” community speculates about developments in elite politics. One of many examples is that there were rumors of a coup in China in 2022.What makes such rumors so hard to evaluate is that China’s political system, particularly as it pertains to elite politics, is incredibly opaque and does not like to “explain itself.” Many rumors and analyses are hard to verify as a result and, therefore, tend to be backed by little ‘hard’ data beyond personnel changes and the front pages of state newspapers. This makes it hard to reject (as well as fully embrace) the rumors. It’s furthermore easy to overinterpret small changes in front-page coverage, such as when Xi Jinping is (not) discussed on the front pages for a handful of days. (We would think that Xi Jinping, like everybody else, will take a few days of vacation on occasion and might sometimes feel a bit under the weather). At Exante Data, we arguably don’t specialize in …