Fresh speculation over Chinese President Xi Jinping’s health emerged after video footage appeared to show Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi interrupting a speech to check on his Chinese counterpart.
In the clip, Modi pauses his opening remarks at the BRICS summit and looks towards Xi after an apparent disturbance draws his attention.
“Is it okay?” Modi asks the translator accompanying the Chinese leader.
Several people believed to be aides or staff members can be seen moving quickly towards Xi before briefly speaking with the president.
Moments later, Xi nods, and Modi continues with his address.
The brief exchange fuelled online rumours, with social media users questioning the Chinese president’s wellbeing.
Xi’s health has long attracted close attention, in part because details about the medical condition of China’s senior leaders are regarded as tightly guarded state secrets.
Beijing has not commented on the incident, which took place during Xi’s first visit to India in seven years.
Footage appears to show Modi halting his speech and turning towards Xi.
Several apparent aides or staff members are seen hurrying towards Xi before exchanging a few words with him.
Later in the day, Xi skipped the gala dinner hosted by Modi for leaders of the BRICS nations, where ally Vladimir Putin was also in attendance.
According to India Today, a source suggested that Xi was tired and returned to his hotel to rest.
Anti-China activists and commentators quickly took to the internet to share their views on the matter, with lawyer Gordon G. Chang saying: ‘Xi Jinping is not well. This time, China could not hide his condition.’
Xie Wanjun, a Chinese political activist currently in the US, chimed in to claim that Xi ‘walked with difficulty’ when leaving the summit.
‘All of this suggests that Xi Jinping is already an elderly man, and that his regime is a dying regime,’ he added.
BRICS leaders including China, Russia and India were in New Delhi on Sunday, discussing ‘inclusive global growth’, after reaching a rare agreement calling for calm in the Middle East.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for ‘cooperation’ within the bloc, which he has said represents ’50 percent of the world’s population, 40 percent of global GDP and more than 25 percent of global trade’.
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‘The power of BRICS lies in our diversity and cooperation,’ Modi told leaders on the final day of talks.
BRICS was created in 2009 as a forum for major emerging economies seeking greater influence in institutions dominated by Western powers.
The group is seeking to bolster its global influence and address conflict, trade turbulence and energy security.
‘We have tried to push inclusive global growth,’ Modi said, ‘We may be rooted in different realities, but together we rise through cooperation and blossom for humanity,’ he said.
Putin said the bloc was working to create a ‘new, more just, multipolar world order’.
Xi said that a ‘world without rules is like an intersection without traffic lights; chaos and disorder are inevitable’.
Xi’s participation in BRICS was important because it was his first visit to neighbouring India since 2019, and the biggest step yet in a cautious thaw between the nuclear-armed rivals.
His visit came six years after a deadly military clash along the disputed Tibetan border between China and India, with ties gradually improving through restored flights, visas and high-level contacts.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi shares a moment with Russian President Vladimir Putin as Chinese President Xi Jinping looks on during the BRICS summit
‘Although our two countries are different in many respects, they are fully capable of complementing each other’s strengths, supporting one another, achieving mutual success and advancing together,’ Xi said as he met Modi, according to a video released by New Delhi.
The underlying territorial dispute remains unresolved, and both sides retain heavy military deployments along their roughly 3,500-kilometre (2,175-mile) high-altitude border.
India’s foreign ministry said in a statement after the meeting that ‘the two leaders expressed commitment to a fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable resolution of the boundary question’.
Deep mistrust remains, with a widening trade deficit and strategic rivalry complicating ties.
‘Both sides should… work hand-in-hand to promote high-quality major financial cooperation, advocate an equal and sustainable global order, and foster an economic globalisation that is open and inclusive,’ Xi said.
Xi’s visit was the target of protests by dozens of Tibetans in New Delhi, exiles like their Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since fleeing a Chinese crackdown in 1959.