RIVERS GO, THOUGH JIANG ZEMIN DOES NOT (THEY SAY)

RUMORS 

SWIRL 

AROUND 

CHINESE EX-PRESIDENT 

JIANG ZEMIN 

FORMER CHINESE PRESIDENT 

& CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY 

GENERAL SECRETARY 

JIANG ZEMIN 

at the time of the 16th Party Congress 

November 2002 

the last one over which Jiang presided as 

General Secretary 

When he failed to appear for the celebration of the ninetieth anniversary of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), July 1 (see here), rumors that Jiang was dead or dying spread throughout the Chinese blogosphere, and the censors went to work.  "Jiang" disappeared as a search term; "jiang" happens to mean "river" or "rivers" as well as the former president's last name.  A contest began to invent ever more ingenious ways of circumventing the censorship; a formal announcement was made that the rumors were wrong. 

It was an interesting indication that either Jiang Zemin, installed as the official top leader after Tiananmen (with Deng Xiaoping still very much on the scene at the time), has meant more to at least a part of the populace then might have been guessed, or that a hunger exists to know more of what is happening to the rulers of their country.