Hu is led away, he appears to be reaching for a document on the table, where the top leaders and retired elders of the party preside.

But a deconstruction of video footage provides additional details and context about the much-scrutinized moment.

The world may never know the answer, given the utter secrecy around Chinese high politics. “This was an astonishing episode - even during the Mao period, you didn’t see a dramatic disruption of the congress like this,” said Victor Shih, a specialist in Chinese politics at the University of California at San Diego. Hu, 79, suffering from poor health, as Chinese state media would later report? Or was he being purged in a dramatic show by China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, for the world to see? The moment, captured on video by journalists who had been allowed into the hall minutes earlier, prompted questions and wild speculation.

Hu - who appeared reluctant to go - out of Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. The roughly 2,000 delegates to the congress had just cast ballots for the party’s prestigious Central Committee.

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