And so the incident can simply be regarded as one more chapter in the ongoing power struggle at the senior-most levels of the C.C.P., between Mr. Xi and Mr. Jiang — or, as I put it recently, between the head of the Red Aristocrats and the leader of the Plebeians.

Still, people in the non-Chinese media ask, perplexed: Wasn’t the disappearance of Mr. Meng a very clumsy and all-too-public way to dispense with an enemy? He was, after all, one of China’s own leading law enforcement officials, who rose to that rank while Mr. Xi already was China’s president and who was then sent to represent the country as the head of the world’s top law enforcement organization. Is the Chinese government now saying it made a mistake in backing him? Isn’t that a huge loss of face?

The answer is no.

In the pre-Confucian system, shame, or chi (恥), was said to be possessed only by the most courageous. Chi was so important that the statesman Guan Zhong (720-645 B.C.), later much acclaimed by Confucius, said it was one of the four moral foundations of a nation. But Confucianism has been co-opted by China’s ruling class over time, and turned into dogma and tool of thought control. Chi, that inner sense of shame, has been debased to mean merely not having face. Who has face now? The rich and powerful.

China today is rich and powerful; therefore, it has face and simply cannot be embarrassed. The investigation of Mr. Meng, the public security ministry has said, “is very timely, totally right and very wise.” The foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said it showed that the government is determined to combat corruption and that there can be “no privilege or exception before the law” — and that “the overwhelming majority of members of the international community will have correct views and conclusions about this.” Embarrassment is in the eyes of the beholder.