Global Courant
Just five weeks ago, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang was at the center of a critical reset in US-China relations: he shook hands with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Beijing and accepted an invitation to visit the United States.
But as a sign of the capriciousness of China’s elite politics, Mr. Qin was abruptly removed as foreign minister on Tuesday after disappearing from public view for 30 days. The move ended the career of a diplomat who had leapt to the top as one of President Xi Jinping’s most trusted rising stars.
“The suddenness and opacity surrounding Qin’s resignation demonstrates the volatility that has now become a hallmark of China’s political system under Xi,” said Jude Blanchette, the holder of the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The official decision that Mr Qin had been replaced – and replaced by former foreign minister Wang Yi – ended weeks of speculation about his fate. Early on, China’s foreign ministry claimed that Mr. Qin had health problems. But the short announcement of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, a council of the Chinese legislature that formally appoints senior government officials, did not mention health or other reasons.
The lack of clarity appears to be fueling speculation among Chinese commentators about the circumstances behind one of the most dramatic falls of a high-flying Chinese official in recent times. His fate has become a huge topic of speculation on social media, with many commentators focusing on his personal life and a potentially compromising relationship while he was ambassador to the United States.
Whatever the veracity of those theories, Mr. Qin is an awkward moment for Mr. Xi, that Mr. Qin in his powerful role as a minister catapulted ahead of other older, longer-serving diplomats.
“If people want to show on a wide screen the opacity of China’s system, and how that – even temporarily – can hinder policy implementation, then they have a good example of this.” Richard McGregorsaid a senior fellow at Sydney’s Lowy Institute who studies Chinese foreign policy, in a telephone interview. Still, he added, Mr. Xi was too powerful to take much damage from Mr. Qin’s fall.
“If there’s any basis to the rumours, it’s a reminder that in the party system, your private life can be just as subject to regulation as your public duties,” said Mr. McGregor. “Although in this case an ambassador’s behavior has implications for national security.”
Mr Qin, 57, was appointed Chinese ambassador to Washington in July 2021 and 17 months later was promoted to Foreign Minister, singled out as a trusted protégé of Mr Xi. Later on Thursday night, China’s foreign ministry removed Mr. Qin from his website. But there was still no mention of his replacement, Mr. Wang.
Mr Qin’s removal is a “sign of Xi’s poor judgment and fallibility,” said Bonnie Glaser, general manager of the Indo-Pacific program at the United States’ German Marshall Fund, who otherwise called Mr Wang’s appointment a “smart move” that would help stabilize Chinese diplomacy.
Mr. Qin’s successor, Mr. Wang, seems to be a safe pair of hands after the backroom drama of the past month. Mr. Wang, 69, is a senior diplomat who is also the director of the bureau of the Chinese Communist Party’s Foreign Affairs Commission, making him a primary policy adviser to Mr. Xi. He is also a member of the Politburo, the council of China’s top 24 officials.
Mr. Wang was the foreign minister until Mr. Qin’s appointment late last year, and Mr. Qin’s return to that post is unlikely to change much in the direction of China’s policy towards the United States, which is set by Mr. Xi. But Mr. Wang has a recent history of difficult meetings with Biden officials that could complicate his job of easing tensions. Mr. Wang and Mr. Blinken held a controversial meeting at a security conference in Munich in February after the downing of a Chinese surveillance balloon by US warplanes over the United States.
The Chinese leadership “appears to have judged that the situation at the Foreign Ministry is so serious that they didn’t think they could trust anyone who is already there to take the job,” said Christopher K Johnson, the president of the China Strategies Group and a former Central Intelligence Agency Chinese politics analyst. “We have seen this pattern before in major cases where a member of the Politburo is called in to stabilize the ship and clear the Augean stables. I suppose Wang will have to do that.”
In public, Mr. Qin unrelentingly loyal to Mr. Xi. Previously, Mr. Qin Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, diplomat in London and protocol officer, a job that brought him close to Mr. Xi brought. Mr. Qin graduated from the University of International Relationsa school in Beijing affiliated with the Chinese security service, and worked as an assistant in the Beijing bureau of United Press International before joining the State Department in 1992.
As foreign minister since late 2022, Mr Qin has been at the forefront of efforts to lift China out of the diplomatic isolation of the Covid era and ease tensions with the United States and other Western countries. But he was also a combative exponent of Xi’s vision of China as a confident global power, impatient with criticism from other governments, and rarely missed an opportunity to praise Mr. Xi.
“Humanity is once again at the crossroads of history”, Mr. Qin told a press conference in Beijing in March. “President Xi Jinping has pointed the right way for global governance from the upper echelons of the world, history and humanity.”
As protocol officer for Mr. Xi was Mr. Qin exhaustingly punctual, said Pavel Slunkin, who was a Belarusian diplomat involved in arranging a visit from Mr. Xi to Belarus in 2015. During the visit, Mr. Slunkin said, Mr. Qin called around 2 a.m. and asked to go immediately to a museum that Mr. Xi would visit, so that Mr. Qin could recheck every detail of the plans, including exactly when the music would hit when Mr. Xi walked up a flight of stairs.
Wonderful “His subordinates and the embassy staff were afraid to approach him. So communication with him was strictly hierarchical, ‘Mr. Slunkin, now one Visiting colleague at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Mr Qin said in reply to email questions. Mr. Qin, he said, “obviously enjoyed his special position of being close to the body – with Xi.”
Additional reporting by Keith Bradsher
