The health of the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao is a state secret guarded so tightly, the Journal writes, “that a scratched dinner can send China-watchers scrambling.” On Sept. 12, Xi Jinping withdrew at the last minute from a gala dinner of world leaders in New Delhi. People familiar with the matter say he was unwell. India’s foreign ministry called rumors of a stroke “fake,” and video showed him climbing the stairs to his plane on his own.
None of it amounts to a diagnosis, and analysts caution against reading a stiff gait. What is not in dispute, per Dennis Wilder, a former senior CIA China analyst now at Georgetown: Xi is 73, a lifelong smoker, overweight, no fan of exercise and, by the account of a former foreign minister, long fond of moutai. He is scheduled to arrive in the United States within days for his first state visit in more than a decade and a Sept. 24 summit with President Trump. Beijing has not confirmed the trip. A foreign-ministry spokesman would say only that the two governments were in touch about “interactions of the two leaders within the year.”
Why a scratched dinner is a financial story
Because there is no succession plan. After scrapping presidential term limits in 2018 and declining to anoint an heir, Xi left China without a clear line of succession, which turns any sign of frailty into a potential crisis. That is the structural fact. The immediate one is that a summit on artificial intelligence, Iran, Taiwan and trade — the four things this desk spends most of its time on — may or may not happen next week, and the people preparing it, Treasury Secretary Bessent and China’s economic czar He Lifeng, were meeting in New York this weekend as though it will.
The trade agenda arrived on the same page. A coalition including the Alliance for Automotive Innovation and the National Automobile Dealers Association wrote to Trump on Thursday urging him to keep the door “firmly shut” to Chinese automakers, who they say would undermine jobs and national security if allowed in. Trump has said he opposes imports but would be fine with Chinese plants that hire Americans, “like Japan does.” Industry is worried he is angling for a deal that invites more Chinese investment in exchange for something else on the list.
Our read
Berkshire Hathaway, elsewhere in this edition, spent twenty-five years writing down what would happen when its founder stepped aside and still took a discount. China spent eight years making sure nobody could write it down. The Risk Atlas calls this event risk, and the assigned defense is not a prediction. It is position caps and a refusal to let any single outcome — a summit, a health scare, a tariff deal — decide the year.
The exposure in the books is deliberate and small: Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), the equipment and platform names that sell into China’s build-out, the Korean market fund. Each is sized so that a week without a summit costs a bad day and not a bad year. If Xi lands and looks vigorous, the speculation deflates and the agenda proceeds. If he does not, the questions get louder, and the only investors who will be comfortable are the ones who never let the answer matter that much.