Does a photo show China's President Xi Jinping suffering a stroke in July 2024? No, that's not true: The image in a social media post is an Associated Press photo from March 11, 2024. Xi was pictured wincing after taking a sip from a cup at the National People's Congress.
The Third Plenary Session of the Chinese Communist Party was taking place beginning on July 15, 2024, but there were no publicly available images from the event, according to news reports. There were no credible news reports that Xi suffered a stroke as of this writing.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on July 17, 2024. It opened:
#BREAKING China's President, Xi Jinping, has suffered a stroke during the Third Plenary Session of the Chinese Communist Party.
Chinese Human Rights reporter, Jennifer Zhang, claims the 'brain' stroke was 'massive' and Xi Jinping is now in a 'critical condition'
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Jul 17 16:04:29 2024 UTC)
A Google Lens reverse image search (archived here) returned an article published on March 11, 2024, by the Daily Mail (archived here) titled, "Storm in a teacup? Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to wince after sipping brew during annual congress as his communist party tightens grip on power." The image of him wincing in the article is an Associated Press photograph.
Lead Stories searched the Associated Press Images website for Xi Jinping March 11, 2024 (archived here), and located the image, which has the caption:
Chinese President Xi Jinping, rear, reacts after drinking from a cup at the closing session of the National People's Congress held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Monday, March 11, 2024. (AP Photo)
(Source: Associated Press website screenshot taken on Wed Jul 17 16:12:18 2024 UTC)
The social media post claims that Xi had the stroke "during the Third Plenary Session of the Chinese Communist Party." The New York Times (archived here) reported that a meeting was "a so-called Third Plenum of the Central Committee," beginning July 15, 2024 but it was "away from the public eye":
Xi Jinping, China's leader, and 370 or so other Communist Party officials are meeting in Beijing this week, away from the public eye, to review a plan intended to shake the world's second-biggest economy out of its malaise.
There is no credible evidence that Xi suffered a stroke during the meeting. A Google search of keywords (archived here) returned no reliable reports as of July 17, 2024.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about Chinese President Xi Jinping can be found here.
