From Nikkei Asia, September 5:
G20 absence hints at turmoil in Chinese domestic politics
Katsuji Nakazawa is a Tokyo-based senior staff and editorial writer at Nikkei. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He was the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize.
There are signs of turmoil in Chinese domestic politics.
On Monday, it was announced that President Xi Jinping will not attend an upcoming summit of the Group of 20 major economies in India. Premier Li Qiang will take his place.
This will be the first time that Xi has skipped a G20 summit, to which he has consistently attached importance as China's top leader.
A precursor seems to have been this summer's Beidaihe meeting, the annual get-together of incumbent and retired leaders of the Chinese Communist Party at the seaside resort of Beidaihe, Hebei Province.
The informal discussions are never officially disclosed, but details of this year's closed-door talks have begun to emerge. In short, the conclave had a significantly different feel from the previous 10 Beidaihe meetings that have taken place since Xi became general secretary of the party in 2012.
Sources said that at this year's gathering, a group of retired party elders reprimanded the top leader in ways they had not until now. Xi later expressed his frustration to his closest aides, according to the information gathered.
This Beidaihe meeting was held without the presence of the most prominent of party elders. Former President Jiang Zemin died at the age of 96 last November, and Xi's immediate predecessor, Hu Jintao, now 80, has seldom been seen since being unceremoniously escorted out of the Great Hall of the People at the party's national congress last October.
These absences might have helped create a desirable situation for Xi. But the matter was not that simple....
....MUCH MORE
