On July 11th,
China’s foreign minister Qin Gang will not attend a diplomatic gathering in Indonesia this week for health reasons, a spokesman for his ministry said on Tuesday.
Top diplomat Wang Yi would represent China at the meetings in Jakarta instead ….
Qin, 57, took over from Wang as foreign minister in December and was last seen in public on June 25 in Beijing after meeting officials from Sri Lanka, Russia and Vietnam.
His absence had not gone unnoticed.
Quickly, rumours about an extramarital affair between Qin and Fu Xiaotian, a reporter for Phoenix Television, went viral. People quickly found Fu’s Wechat moments, Weibo account and Twitter account, and discovered that she had a son with Mr. Qin. Qin, of course, is married to another woman.
Other rumours about the background of Ms. Fu were also colourful but can not be verified. Of course this melon is very popular among Chinese social media, and even inside the walled-country, people find ways to consume it.
And the fact that people gossip about it is in very stark contrast to the other scandal (it involved a tennis player which was all erased from Chinese social media).
With each day Qin out of the public view, speculations on his political career became intense. Foreign reporters probably found it amusing to keep asking “where is your minister” at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) press conferences, if only to watch the spokesperson trying her best to dodge the question.
The suspense finally ended on July 25th, when the official announcement of Qin’s demotion was made public. Wang Yi, the former Foreign Minister is working in Qin’s place for now.
How did Qin become the Foreign minister?
Some mentioned that Qin has an uncle who was a former Foreign Minister. Many believe that Qin was fast promoted to the position of minister by Xi Jinping, and the demotion was a result of in-fighting. While the Chinese government refused to give any explanation, many people are trying to read meanings out of tea leaves, as usual.
Pavel Slunkin, a former Belarus diplomat, wrote a thread(alt) on his dealings with Mr. Qin in 2015, which offers some ‘behind the scenes’ inner working of the Chinese political system.
Many rumours surrounding the sudden disappearance of the Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang. Of course, I don’t know where he is or what is happening to him. Instead I will share my impressions of our meeting and working together in 2015.
He then headed the Protocol Department of the Foreign Ministry and came to Belarus as part of a delegation led by Xi Jinping. You can spot him in this picture. Or us both in this video.
Let me start by saying that the Chinese protocol is a huge machine that employs hundreds of diplomats. The entire Protocol department of Belarus then consisted of 11 people. This is also the reason why a young diplomat like me had a chance to work with Qin Gang and other [Chinese] VIPs.
Preparations for Xi’s visit began a few months before he arrived in Minsk. Chinese diplomats persistently came to the Foreign Ministry literally every day. We discussed exactly the same protocol aspects of the visit several dozen times
Like if the head of Belarusian protocol should go up and greet Xi when his plane lands. As you can see here, Chinese were against
Our everyday negotiations felt like Groundhog Day. We ended them late in the evening, agreed on all the protocol nuances, but the next day the Chinese colleagues again asked for a meeting. And we discussed the same thing again. And so day after day.
To be honest, we could save a lot of time. Because when Chinese diplomats didn’t like something, they called Beijing. And later Beijing called Lukashenka’s administration. Surely, almost any whim of China’s leadership immediately became a new arrangement.
Despite the fact that there is no concept of “state visit” (the most honorable type of visit) in Belarusian protocol practice, Chinese diplomats called Xi’s visit that way. The Chinese Embassy even bought dozens of huge advertising banners all over Minsk to promote it this way
Under pressure from China and under the temptation of Chinese investments, Minsk gave in and agreed to call the visit exactly “state”. Here is the screen from the Lukashenka’s website
The first day of the visit ended very late. And on the second day, Xi planned to visit the Museum of the Great Patriotic War. At 2 o’clock in the morning, Qin Gang decided to once again check the readiness of the museum to meet his boss.
At 2 am (!!!), at his request, my colleagues woke up the deputy director of the museum and asked him to arrange another excursion to the museum for the Chinese protocol.
It looked very surreal. Chinese diplomats walked up the stairs of the museum, counted the steps and asked: “When will the solemn music turn on? What step will the Chairman (Xi) step at this moment? Will it be this one? Or that one? Are you sure?!“.
At 3 am, I was sure only that I wanted to sleep, and just pointed to a random step. As you guessed, tomorrow the music turned on at a completely different moment
The next morning, I had breakfast together with Qin Gan at the “Beiging Hotel” (the Chinese built it in Minsk, among other things, in order to receive large delegations from the PRC).
He surprised me with his excellent English and how his subordinates were afraid of him. We briefly discussed the visit and plans for today. He was eating traditional Chinese noodle soup. Very, very, very (!) loudly (no exaggeration here).
When Xi finally flew back to Beijing, I approached one of the Chinese diplomats (subordinates of Qin Gang) and asked him: “What was all this for? These months of useless negotiations about the same thing. This game of arithmetic with steps at the museum at night?“.
Perhaps for the first time in months, he was completely honest with me: “In Beijing, there are several hundred people rowing behind me for my position. So, if I don’t do this, someone else will.”
Many Chinese read the thread, and they confirmed that this relation between the boss and the subordinates is the same at every level of the government. Those who serve the boss the best often get promoted to important positions. Xi himself got to his current position by treating Jiang Zemin super carefully and won the old man’s heart and mind.
The website of the Chinese MoFA is monitored closely. Many people reported that Qin’s name was scraped off, as if he was never the minister there. Someone joked about his name, Qin Gone (Gang). Others ask: if he had never been the minister, is it possible to fire him?
One Chinese commented on Twitter:
Looking at all kinds of takes on Mr. Qin’s take by China experts, I feel very sad. Simply put, it is basically impossible to analyze/predict today’s Chinese politics through the fog. Mainly for two reasons: First, the political high pressure leads to a chilling effect, no one dares to speak. In the past, there is some truth to the gossip. Now, rumours are only fiction. Second, we are in the era of personal dictatorship, everything is beyond the customs or usual practices, and the analysis had no more basis. In short, various Chinese experts, just surrender!
But perhaps this attention on Qin’s disappearance on MoFA’s website from foreign media is too embarrassing, on July 27th, some people noted that:
UPDATE: Qin Gang is back on the MOFA website!
Could mean political investigation ongoing. Could mean Qin is simply ill. Could mean nothing more than tech difficulties, as suggested @ByChunHan
We still have no updates on Qin and his last activity on the website is still 25 June.
Yet, other people disagree.
Hahaha, try your best to guess the minister game. During the cultural revolution, one foreign minister was sent away to “criticize himself”, and for years, no one outside China noticed.
BTW, Southern China Morning Post reported “Chinese anti-corruption investigators target top PLA Rocket Force generals, sources say”
Military graft-busters are targeting the force’s current commander, Li Yuchao, and a past and present deputy, Zhang Zhenzhong and Liu Guangbin
The force plays a central role in maintaining and deploying nuclear warheads as well as Xi Jinping’s plans to strengthen the country’s deterrence capabilities
Many Chinese believe that Qin’s downfall is related to the shake-up of the Rocket Force generals. Some speculates that the Rocket force could not launch missiles due to corruptions, and somehow this secret was leaked to the USA.
Xi has chosen replacement for the generals of the Rocket Force. The new generals are believed to be mediocre but very loyal. Just the kind of people Xi needs.
In our newsletter 127, we discussed signs showing the economy of China being in trouble. Since then, more signs appeared. The Chinese government seems worried: they have just issued 20 documents to direct the economy. But there was no concrete policy at all. Someone commented on Twitter:
In my experience, there has never been a situation where the central government is so intensively shouting slogans to revitalize the economy, I could not find a tiny bit of practical measures, not at all.
I guess now the local government officials are very confused, “What the hell is this going to make me do? Or what am I not going to do? I can’t understand even if I read every page of the 20 or 30 new documents!”
Twitter has worried a lot of people, especially people like Li Laoshi. They worry that when the next Blank Paper revolution happens, there will be no platform that can spread the message of the movement. Anonymity is a big ‘factor’ for Chinese on Twitter, so Threads is out. Mastodon is too many. It seems BlueSky is where they might go. Or they will just vanish. (X is/will be soon not a solution, as Musk has business in China).
Meanwhile, scam accounts registered with blue checkmark pretending to be porn websites are everywhere. Victims also contacted Chinese Twitter influencers to tell their story: how they thought it was a porn website, started chatting and then agreed to chat naked, only to be taken videos and photos fully naked. These videos and photos were then used to blackmail them out of thousands of yuan.
Here are some videos from social media: