Qin Gang’s short tenure as China’s foreign minister reflects poorly on Chinese President Xi Jinping. U.S.-China relations are perilously close to their nadir under Xi, who has ramped up repression at home and coercion abroad.
The naked truth about Qin’s may prove unspectacular, if scurrilous. However, until the facts are laid bare, it is logical to link his precipitous departure to an error of judgment by the man most responsible for Qin’s rapid ascension to lead China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). When you accumulate myriad titles and become an apparent leader for life, it is hard to escape blame when things go awry, especially when they are left unexplained.
The truth is always more brutal to come by in an authoritarian regime. Vladimir Putin tells Russians his “special military operation” in Ukraine is on track. Are the Chinese meant to accept Qin’s disappearance as a humdrum health issue? Even the terse offers no illumination.
The mysterious handling of Qin is bound to sow inside and outside China. At a moment of heightened U.S.-China tensions, however, the latter should be of grave concern to all.
Qin foreshadowed this point in a parting about his stint as ambassador to the United States. As he wrote earlier this year in The Washington Post, “The future of the entire planet … depends on a healthy and stable China-U.S. relationship.” When the state’s most forward-facing official vanishes without comment, it is difficult for Americans not to question Xi’s grasp on power.
If China were less determined to exert its newfound power around the world, the absence of a foreign minister might pass with little comment. But Qin’s absence was hard to miss at gatherings of foreign ministers, including the meeting in Cape Town last month and especially at the ministerial in Jakarta earlier this month.
While speculation is constrained only by the imagination, it’s worth considering the main rationales for Qin’s removal.
First, Qin’s initial absence was ascribed to an unspecified . The apparent retention of his position as state councilor is evidence of something other than an anti-corruption crackdown and, thus, consistent with a possible physical malady. Even so, his rapid and near-total from the MFA web page suggests more than a health problem.
Second, the rumor about an affair emerged earlier this year, based on the social media posts of Phoenix Television presenter . Improprieties may have blotted Qin’s copybook, but it is difficult to believe an extramarital affair and love child with a prominent journalist fully explain Qin’s swift departure from the MFA.
So, we are left with a third and more compelling theory for Qin’s removal: He had a falling out with Xi about how to approach foreign policy, particularly with the United States. It seems plausible that Qin is a scapegoat for the troubled state of U.S.-China relations. In authoritarian societies, strongmen need someone else to take the fall.
The mishandling of relations with the United States is hardly on par with Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution. Still, Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao, faces a similar dilemma: It is difficult to blame others when matters don’t work out as advertised.
Based on current information, it is hard not to blame Xi for falling out with his hand-picked foreign minister. Back in Beijing, it must have been difficult for Qin not to offer alternative ways to accomplish Xi’s ambitions for achieving global preeminence. Goals may have aligned, but tactics diverged.
The truth will emerge — eventually. Indeed, that has been the case for many high-profile officials, activists, and business executives who disappeared for a while, including the former powerful security chief , the famous artist , and Alibaba founder .
The reappointment of Wang Yi and his immediate overseas travel is Beijing’s way of conveying business as usual. Promoted last year to become China’s , Wang is the indefatigable devil we know. But as the director of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission, he has more than a full plate without having to be responsible for the daily affairs of the MFA. Xi’s eventual appointment of a long-term replacement for Qin will be the more revelatory indicator of thinking within the Zhongnanhai offices of party leaders regarding the direction of foreign policy in a post-Qin MFA.
Foreign ministers in the People’s Republic of China are political warriors fending off perceived external adversaries. China’s first foreign minister, Zhou Enlai, reversed the famous dictum of Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz when he argued that “All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.”
But there is more than one way to conduct political warfare. Qin represented a more sophisticated approach to great-power competition. We should be worried that Xi might envision a more brute-force approach to world affairs.