It's possible this was coördinated, but likely it's rather one of those current trends things. Like on HN, article on X comes up, and soon after article on tangent of X comes up shortly after riding the coattails of X.

Mr Xi is in town, what else related to Xi can give us more eyeballs now that all things Xi/China are in the news, what do we have? Oh, yes, of course, spying!