Seeking truth from facts: China's stonewalling on Qin Gang's dismissal as FM has damaged its image as a responsible world power

My latest column published on SCMP on 31/07/2021, with newly added content on Donald Trump and Qin's extra-marital affair.

It is like watching a political satire show, except that it’s not. Qin Gang, China’s newly minted foreign minister and a high-flying political star, has disappeared from public view since June 25.

Speculation about his political future and personal well-being started to gather pace after a Foreign Ministry spokesperson claimed on July 11 that Qin was unable to attend the Asean foreign ministers’ meeting due to “health reasons”.

That claim came after Beijing postponed a trip by European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, scheduled for the second week of July. Borrell was supposed to meet Qin to reduce misunderstandings between the two sides.

In the ensuing two weeks, speculation about Qin’s whereabouts has become more intense but China’s state media remains conspicuously silent.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning drew the short straw and had to face Qin-related questions at the daily press briefing. From the short videos being circulated online, one could feel the farcical awkwardness in the air whenever a Qin-related question arose.

Often, for a few seconds, Mao would pretend to look at and reshuffle her prepared notes or ask a reporter to repeat the question before giving her standard reply: “I don’t have any information to offer”, or “I have no knowledge of that issue”.

On July 17, when asked to confirm whether Qin was still the foreign minister, Mao told the reporter to check the ministry’s website which listed Qin as the foreign minister and said she did not have any new information. So, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson could not directly confirm the foreign minister was still the foreign minister, and a reporter had to check the ministry’s website to confirm he was?

Mao has my sympathy, though. She knew the Qin-related questions would pop up every day she walked into the briefing room, but apparently she was not authorised to say anything on that matter, not even to confirm that Qin was still foreign minister even though on paper he was.

Also, Mao’s exchanges with foreign reporters over Qin were all excluded from the readouts in the ministry’s website, keeping up the charade that “China’s diplomatic activities are moving forward normally”.

The shoe finally dropped on July 25 when the National People’s Congress Standing Committee replaced Qin with Wang Yi, his predecessor. At the briefing next day, Mao continued her stonewalling strategy by referring reporters to Xinhua reports as to why her former boss was removed – but Xinhua reports did not give any reason.

Meanwhile, the ministry was busy scrubbing Qin’s name and speeches from the official website, as if his seven-month tenure had not happened at all. One section which listed China’s foreign ministers since the People’s Republic was founded in 1949 no longer includes Qin. He was only listed as China’s ambassador to the United States from 2021 to 2023.

On Friday, the ministry quietly began to reinstate references to Qin which were erased on Tuesday, apparently because of intense media scrutiny. But the damage is done. 

Old habits die hard. The ministry’s actions remind me of the antics popular in the heyday of Mao Zedong after leaders were purged. Such moves are counterproductive and ridiculous.

Equally counterproductive is the official stonewalling on why Qin was removed. Speculation has run amok in the absence of official explanation, with suggestions that his dismissal was politically motivated and or that he was implicated in an extramarital affair with a Chinese TV anchor who recently gave birth to a boy in the United States – a possible US passport holder. This could be an acute embarrassment for China’s top leadership. It is also possible that he is unwell.

Before his downfall, Qin appeared to be on a rocket-propelled career path. He was believed to have earned the trust and confidence of President Xi Jinping after he became the Foreign Ministry protocol department’s director general in 2014. After he was promoted to assistant foreign minister in 2017 and vice-foreign minister in 2018, he continued to oversee diplomatic protocols, playing a key role in Xi’s reception of visiting foreign leaders.

One story going round in Beijing is that Donald Trump inadvertently played a role in Qin’s elevation. When the then American president visited China in 2017, Trump, known for his superlatives, spoke highly of Qin’s competence in front of Xi who was duly impressed.

China’s first premier Zhou Enlai set the ground rules on how to conduct foreign diplomacy and stated that “nothing is too small in foreign affairs”, which the foreign ministry staff have since followed zealously.

Qin’s scrupulous attention to details and his innovations to elevate Xi’s status as a world leader on par with the US president have truly impressed Xi. The changes include a presidential music, three honor guards blowing trumpets, and having female soldiers in the ceremonial guard to receive visiting heads of states.

Pavel Slunkin, a former Belarus diplomat, recently gave a vivid example on the lengths and depths Chinese diplomats under Qin’s leadership would plumb to make Xi stand tall as a world leader.

Working together with Qin’s people on Xi’s 2015 visit to Belarus, he recalled that Qin called him at 2am to check the readiness of the museum Xi planned to visit.

“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?!", Slunkin said in a twitter feed.

“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”

So Qin was promoted over several other candidates who had more seniority to become China’s youngest foreign minister in December and a State Councilor in March.

The decision to replace Qin with Wang was meant to signal stability and continuity of China’s foreign policies. Wang was China’s foreign minister from March 2013 to December 2022. At the end of his tenure, Wang was elevated to become director of office of the Communist Party’s foreign affairs commission – making him the highest-ranking diplomat in China. The commission is headed by Xi himself.

The saga surrounding Qin has raised questions about China’s power politics. Some might see his removal as a sign of weakness. This line of thinking is off the mark. The fact that Xi could remove Qin easily is a sign of political strength, as was the fact he could promote him rapidly through a hierarchy which values seniority.

Also, Qin’s removal and Wang’s reappointment are unlikely to signal any policy shift. Under Xi’s ironclad leadership, he alone makes all the important decisions. China’s foreign minister operates more like an executor of policies.

Having said that, speculation surrounding the saga has damaged China’s reputation and image as a responsible world power. China might be treating the whole saga as a domestic affair, which is true in a certain sense. But, as the world’s second-largest economy and a rising power at odds with the West over almost everything from values to technology, the rest of the world has a valid interest in China’s decision-making process.

As I was writing this column, my mind kept shifting to a phrase popularised by Deng Xiaoping: seeking truth from facts. Deng frequently used that slogan to break barriers of ultra-leftist influences to push for reform and opening up in the 1980s and 1990s.

In Qin’s case, if the government had come clean with the reasons for Qin’s dismissal and been willing to address questions from the media, it might have incurred nothing more than embarrassment. By stonewalling on the issue, China has suffered much more than embarrassment.

End