Fresh footage has emerged showing more of what happened before China’s former leader Hu Jintao was dramatically led out of a session during last week’s Communist Party Congress in Beijing.
It shows in greater detail how outgoing Politburo member Li Zhanshu, to Mr Hu’s left, takes a file away and speaks to him.
Then China’s current leader Xi Jinping gives lengthy instructions to another man who subsequently attempts to persuade Mr Hu to leave.
The unexpected moment led to intense speculation, with some arguing that it was a deliberate power play by Mr Xi to show that the more consensus-driven Hu era was definitively over while others suggested it could have been because of Mr Hu’s poor health.
The official Xinhua news agency later tweeted that Mr Hu had been escorted from the chamber after feeling unwell – but it did not report that domestically. Twitter is blocked to users in China.
The moment unfolded the day before Mr Xi announced his third term and his top team of loyalists – both the timing and the fact that Chinese politics are so opaque sparked a global guessing game as to what had happened.
Many wondered if it was a deliberate piece of political theatre. Unlike Mr Hu, whose presidency between 2003 and 2013 was seen as a time of opening up to the outside world, Mr Xi has presided over a country that has become increasingly isolated.
