RUMOURS say the health of China's paramount leader, Mr Deng Xiaoping, is failing, although officials say there is little change and he is all right for a man of 92.
Western diplomats say the longer Mr Deng lingers, the less impact his death will have on the delicate balance of power at the top of China's ruling Communist Party.
The barometer of Mr Deng's health in China's highly secretive system is the travel of top leaders and close family members, with few willing to be abroad if Mr Deng was close to death, diplomats said.
Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper reported at the weekend that Mr Deng, the architect of China's sweeping economic reforms, had been rushed to hospital last Thursday after a massive stroke that followed an earlier mild stroke.
He had been taken to hospital before the Chinese lunar new year, which fell on February 7th, after the earlier stroke.
Similar rumours sent Hong Kong stocks tumbling on Friday.
There was little sign in Beijing of any major change in the fragile health of the man whose policies transformed a backward Stalinist state into an economic powerhouse.
"I think, for someone of that advanced age, the state of his health should be described as all right," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said at the meeting of European and Asian foreign ministers in Singapore.
The state of Mr Deng's health was evident from the fact that the Foreign Minister, Mr Qian Qichen, attended the meeting in Singapore, the spokesman said. "Otherwise, Minister Qian wouldn't be here."
In another indication that Mr Deng's health may not be in crisis, the Vice-Premier, Mr Li Lanqing, a member of the powerful party politburo, left Beijing on Saturdays to visit Israel and Iran. That tripe would certainly have been cancelled if Mr Deng was near death because no senior leader would want to be abroad when the patriarch dies, one western diplomat said.
. Police yesterday halted a march on the Chinese consulate in Istanbul by Uighur exiles protesting at the killing of their ethnic kin during a riot in north west China's Xinjiang province last week. Demonstrators earlier held a rally about 3 km from the consulate, before attempting to march on the building.