IF WE HAD BETTER INTELLIGENCE SERVICES THEY'D BE SPREADING THE RUMOR:

The story basically went through three stages, brewing in Chinese circles before being translated into English by influencers opposed to the Chinese government and finally being amplified by Indian Twitter accounts.

Stage 1: It's not rare to see such salacious political rumors if you follow a lot of Chinese-language Twitter accounts. There's a whole world of commentators and anonymous accounts openly speculating about every faint signal coming out of China's state media, magnifying every word and gesture, and interpreting it as something groundbreaking.

The rumor that's going around this time had the benefit of coinciding with a few real news events that were combined into a narrative that may look plausible to people unfamiliar with China. Here are the things that actually happened: (1) a Chinese general, Li Qiaoming, left his commander post after five years, and it hasn't been reported where he's heading; (2) a 105-year-old retired high-ranking politician made a rare media appearance to talk about respecting the elders; (3) domestic flights in China were experiencing high cancellation rates--as high as 60% last week; (4) Xi hadn't appeared in public since he returned from Uzbekistan on September 16.

These were all the materials that conspiracy theorists needed to somehow conclude that Xi must have been under house arrest initiated by the general and the party elder. That story first started circulating among Chinese-language accounts on September 22.

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