Xi Jinping, who is slated to become the next leader of China, may have suffered a heart attack, according to a report in the London Daily Telegraph.
Xi’s unusual absence from the public eye over the past week has raised questions about his status and whereabouts. He had canceled a number of meetings with high-level foreign dignitaries, including one with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sept. 4.
Communist Party officials have been reticent to comment on Xi’s condition.
"Although people have said he suffered a back injury, he actually had a heart attack, a myocardial infarction," Li Weidong, a political commentator in Beijing and former editor of China Reform magazine, told the Telegraph.
However, Willy Lam, the former editor of the South China Morning Post, said he thinks the 59-year-old Jinping suffered a stroke.
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