Chinese state media denied rumours yesterday that former president Jiang Zemin had died after a Hong Kong television station said he had.
"Recent reports of some overseas media organisations about Jiang Zemin's death from illness are pure rumour," the official Xinhua news agency quoted "authoritative sources" as saying.
Mr Jiang (84) is in poor health. Three sources with ties to China's leadership told Reuters that he is in intensive care in Beijing at the No. 301 military hospital after suffering a heart attack.
In Chinese politics, the health of a leader is fodder for rumours about how the balance of power is shifting at the highest levels of the government.
Current President Hu Jintao retires from office from late next year in a sweeping leadership overhaul, and the rumours about Jiang's health underscore the uncertainties around this.
Hong Kong's Asia Television interrupted its main newscast on Wednesday evening to announce solemnly that Mr Jiang had died, and followed with a brief profile. It kept up the news for several hours on a ticker and then said it would air a special report on Mr Jiang's life late in the evening.
It later cancelled the report, and withdrew the ticker after failing to get official confirmation.
Meanwhile, the Shandong News website in northeast China posted a black banner with white characters, saying "Our Respectable Comrade Jiang Zemin Is Immortal".
Premature reports about the demise of Chinese leaders are hardly new. In the 1990s, Hong Kong and Japanese media reported several times that paramount leader Deng Xiaoping had died.
Reuters