Are rumours about coup and flight cancellations in China false?
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Singapore: Amid speculations of President Xi Jinping in house arrest in Beijing, there emerged "evidence" of foul play in the form of suspected cancellation of flights and trains in China.
Since social media triggered the news, it still largely remains as speculations with no way to verify what is happening in China.
Meanwhile some popular Twitter accounts reportedly posted unconfirmed images of empty air space over China, suggestive of a military coup to oust Xi Jinping.
According to India Today, popular Twitter accounts posted about the cancellation of flights on September 21 as it is due to some military requests.
The report says that there was no drop in the number of flights in movement over the Chinese airspace at any given time.
Even the Beijing airspace, the likely threatre of coup if it at all happening, was perfectly normal.
After closely monitoring the database of Chinese flights on a daily basis and for the data from 2019 to 2022, the report by India Today showed the cyclical dip each time there has been a large cluster or spread of COVID.
"Hence the cancellation of flights do not mean for certain that it is due to some untoward incident or the work of the Chinese military forces" the report said.
The rumours of a coup and subsequent house arrest of Xi Jinping came about because of many reasons—particularly, the world is largely ignorant of internal politics of the nation.
As for rumours of flight cancellation, it emerged from looking at flight tracking data with the wrong context and wrong times.
There is also the major reason of its asymmetric population distribution which played its role in these reports.
China is densely populated on its Eastern and Southern sides and not so in its central and Western sides, according to the report.
The images shared of its airspace appeared as if there were no flights over most of China.
Also, many snapshots of the air space were taken during the wee hours of the local time zone when there was limited takeoffs and landings.
Remember, China is still fighting the covid crisis with frequent lockdowns and shutdowns, as a result life is brought to a standstill when clusters emerge.
No foreign journalists living in China raised any alarm about any serious political change in the nation, as per the report.
