Since the disappearances look disastrous for China’s image, many in Hong Kong believe that they cannot have been a deliberate policy by the central leadership. They speculate that lower-level officials overstepped the mark, or even that Communist Party factions hostile to Mr Xi are trying to embarrass him. China is left with a headache. It will have to cook up some plausible-sounding explanation for the mystery and coax, cajole or coerce the missing men into playing along. That, the theory goes, explains the prolonged silence.
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