new delhi the internet especially social media was awash on saturday with speculation that chinese president xi jinping who has ruled his country with absolute authority had been deposed in a coup that began unfolding while he was away in samarkand attending the sco summit beginning september 14there was no corroborative reporting from any reputed international news outlet however and the chinese foreign ministry was silentread alsopresident xi jinping chinas chairman of everythingthe chinese president hosting a winter olympics beleaguered by complaints about human rights abuses has upended tradition to restore strongman rule in china and tighten communist party control over the economy and societythere were no reports on the subject from chinese media either some websites said the rumours were unfounded and they were part of an antixi conspiracythese rumours come before the chinese communist partys 20th national congress on october 16 where xi is expected to secure power for an unprecedented third term of five yearsearlier this week two former ministers had been sentenced to death for graft as part of xis crackdown on corruption but they were described in some reports as part of anantixi political factionaccording to unverified posts on twitter the chinese president had left samarkand before the official closing ceremony only to be placed under house arrest on landing in beijing on september 16 a news website quoted one news highland vision as saying that former chinese president hu jintao and chinese expremierwen jiabao along with former standing committee member song ping now controlled the central guard bureau cgb which protects members of the cpcs central committee and that xi had been shorn of authority over the chinese peoples liberation armytwitter posts claimed beijing airport had cancelled 6000 international and domestic flights and that ticket sales for highspeed rail and highspeed trains themselves had been stopped other tweets described pla vehicles moving towards beijing on september 22 some tweets displayed pictures from flight radar apps that showed zero aircraft activity over beijing while others countered with app radar pictures of normal aviation activity