Damaging coup rumours ricochet across China (BBC)
Have you heard? There's been a coup in China! Tanks have been spotted on the streets of Beijing and other cities! Shots were fired near the Communist Party's leadership compound!
OK, before you get too agitated, there is no coup. To be more exact, as far as we know there has been no attempted coup.
To be completely correct we should say we do not know what's going on. The fact is there is no evidence of a coup. But it is a subject that has obsessed many in China this week.
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of reporting on China in the past few days. Coup rumours ricocheted back and forth, most over the internet, but some were picked up by western newspapers. China's microblogs were awash with speculation. Hard facts were non-existent.
Purges and power-struggles
Photographs of tanks and armoured cars on city streets were flying around Twitter and elsewhere. On closer inspection though, some of the pictures seemed to be old ones from rehearsals for military parades, others did not even seem to be of Beijing, as they claimed, but different Chinese cities.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17476760
The more things change, the more they remain the same ...
I originally was hunting for this article because I was shocked to read that Bo had vanished.
= new reply since forum marked as read
