The Chinese government began erasing mentions of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang — who has not been seen publicly since June 25 and lost his position this week — from the Foreign Ministry’s website on Tuesday and has refused to answer questions about his status in subsequent days.
Qin became the shortest-serving foreign minister in the history of communist China on Tuesday after the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee voted to oust him from office on Tuesday, replacing him with his predecessor Wang Yi. Genocidal dictator Xi Jinping appointed Qin to lead the ministry in December following his tenure as Chinese ambassador to America. At 57 years old, Qin was one of the youngest and fastest-rising Communist Party officials since Xi seized power in 2013.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on May 19, 2023. (FLORENCE LO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Wang currently holds the title of foreign minister in addition to leading the foreign policy of the Politburo, making him the most powerful diplomat in modern Chinese history. As Beijing has offered little to no information on what led to Qin’s demise, it remains unclear if Wang played any role in his disappearance.
Qin last made a public appearance in meetings with diplomats from Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Russia on June 25. He has yet to make any public statements or been seen since, leading to speculation that he ran afoul of Xi’s politics, engaged in some inappropriate behavior, or otherwise angered the Party leadership.
Multiple media outlets noted on Wednesday and Thursday that, in addition to removing Qin from office, Qin appears to have disappeared from the Foreign Ministry website entirely. An online search for his name yields a long list of URLs, most of them to statements regarding his various diplomatic engagements and speeches during his time as foreign minister. Clicking on the URLs, however, leads to an empty page reading in Chinese text, “the page you are visiting does not exist or has been deleted.”
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Qin’s portrait and biography do appear still available at press time on the Foreign Ministry website under the list of “former vice ministers and assistant ministers,” on an old page that identifies him as a “vice minister of foreign affairs” with portfolio work in Europe. He is not listed as a former foreign minister.
The Australian network ABC reported that Qin’s foreign minister work at the website appeared to have disappeared an hour after the Chinese government announced that he had lost his job on Tuesday. The declaration appeared in the state news outlet Xinhua described as the “appointment” of a new foreign minister, rather than the deposition of the current one. It offered no information regarding the process that led to Qin’s removal and appeared to indicate that Wang’s return to the title was part of a routine session during which NPC officials also appointed a new head of the People’s Bank of China (the old head had reached retirement age last year).
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang shake hands ahead of a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on June 18, 2023. (LEAH MILLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Oddly, while Qin lost his most prominent position, he remains a State Councilor. His name remains visible on the list of councilors on the body’s English-language site at press time.
The confusion has prompted reporters to repeatedly ask the Foreign Ministry at its regular press briefings for an explanation and for assurances that Qin is well. The U.K. Guardian described the scene at Wednesday’s briefing as reporters issuing “a barrage of questions over Qin’s disappearance and dismissal” that went entirely unanswered. On Thursday, spokeswoman Mao Ning reportedly offered a short reply to the second round of questions about Qin: “we consistently oppose malicious hype of this matter.”
The transcripts of Mao’s press briefings on Thursday and Wednesday omitted all of the questions about Qin.
Prior to his ouster, Qin began missing critical diplomatic engagements, most prominently a scheduled appearance at a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Foreign Ministry spokespeople responded to questions of his whereabouts by claiming that Qin was suffering from an illness, without elaborating. Qin also missed a meeting with American climate czar John Kerry in Beijing and canceled a proposed meeting with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. Australia also postponed a planned China-Australia Foreign and Strategic Dialogue this month after Qin disappeared and Beijing did not name a replacement representative for the event.
While offering no information on Qin’s removal, the Chinese government has curiously failed to censor speculation on Weibo, the primary regime-controlled social media outlet. There, rumors have circulated that Qin had engaged in an affair with a journalist, named as PhoenixTV reporter Fu Xiaotian, who has also disappeared. She has not appeared on television or in public since Qin disappeared and made her last social media postings, on Weibo and Twitter, in April. Her last social media post debuted an infant son, Er-Kin, whose father is not publicly known; the post also included an image of her interview with Qin in March 2022, which she claimed was her last with the network.