By TONY MOBILIFONITIS

WESTERN media, like China’s state-owned media, were silent over the weekend after India’s media ran rampant with rumours that Chinese President Xi Jinping was under house arrest in a coup run by the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA).

One Indian news site reported international and domestic flights to and from Beijing had been halted while a video posted on Twitter by Jennifer Zeng, apparently showed a 40km-long PLA military convoy going towards Beijing on September 22nd. Zeng reported that six senior anti-Xi officials had been arrested recently and three sentenced to death.

The reports coincided with news and dramatic video footage from September 16 showing a high-rise building on fire in the provincial capital of Changsha. The building housed the offices of China Telecom and was…