Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang, who has not been seen in public for a month, will be replaced by his former boss top diplomat Wang Yi. Chinese state media reported this on Tuesday, without any explanation about where Qin (57) is. Earlier he would be absent due to health problems. There is a lot of speculation about Qin’s sudden disappearance, and the fact that he has now also been officially removed from his position fuels the rumours.
Qin has not been seen since June 25, when he met with representatives from Russia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka in Beijing. He has since been largely replaced by Wang Yi in his duties as foreign minister, such as during diplomatic meetings in Jakarta and Johannesburg. Yi himself was foreign minister before Qin took office and held an even higher diplomatic position, within the Communist Party of China. Still, his disappearance caused a messy diplomatic relationship between China and the rest of the world.
For example, Qin was an important player in relations between the United States and China, which have cooled in recent times and which he should have repaired. The American foreign minister Antony Blinken was still in Beijing a week before Qin’s disappearance, when the two agreed that the Chinese foreign minister would also come to Washington. When Qin disappeared, that was suddenly no longer possible.
Rising star extinguished
Neil Thomas, an expert on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington, told the US newspaper The Washington Post: “The prolonged silence [rondom de verdwijning van Qi] has been enormously damaging to Chinese diplomacy. The Communist Party’s addiction to keeping its inner workings secret has a crippling effect on China’s ability to work with the outside world.”
Before his disappearance, Qin had been on an impressively fast climb up the ladder of China’s government and Communist Party. Qin was known as a proud loyalist of President Xi Jinping. He started as a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then was responsible for planning Xi’s international travel. From 2018 to 21, he served as Deputy Secretary of State and from 2021 to 2023, he served as the Chinese Ambassador to the United States. Why Qin’s rising star suddenly died last month is still not clear.
‘Studying and thinking’
Prominent Chinese figures often suddenly disappear from public life under suspicious circumstances. Actors, artists, athletes, journalists and politicians have already gone missing, for reasons that are unclear or just after they somehow offended the Communist Party.
The most famous example is multibillionaire Jack Ma, the founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, who was accused by Beijing of “monopolistic practices”. Ma had criticized the Chinese government for its regulation of business and disappeared for about three months. He was then seen in public again, saying that he had withdrawn to “study and think” and that he had become “more determined to devote himself to education and the public good.” His criticism of the Chinese government suddenly vanished.