His fate is still unclear: China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang was fired four weeks after he was last seen. His successor is an old acquaintance.
Munich/Beijing – China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang had been missing for four weeks, now he has been removed from office. The Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported this in brief on Tuesday. “Removal of Qin Gang as foreign minister, appointment of Wang Yi as foreign minister,” Xinhua wrote, without first providing an explanation for the move.
The decision was made at a short-term meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s sham parliament. Wang Yi held the post of foreign minister until the end of last year, after which he was promoted to become the Communist Party’s top diplomat.
China’s former foreign minister was last seen on June 25
Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who has now been recalled, last attended public meetings on June 25, including a meeting with Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister. The last known recordings of Qin also date from that day. Since then, the diplomat, who previously served as US ambassador to Washington, has not been seen in public.
The background to the process is completely unclear. There has recently been speculation about a possible serious Covid disease, an extramarital affair between the minister and a journalist and a charge of corruption.
After several international observers and the media noticed Qin Gang’s absence, China’s foreign ministry felt compelled to make a statement in mid-July and spoke of “health reasons” that would prevent the minister from attending the meeting of foreign ministers of the Asean group in Jakarta. The foreign office in Beijing fended off further attempts to get a reason for the politician’s unusual disappearance with standard phrases.
China’s previous foreign minister was a close confidante of President Xi Jinping
The 57-year-old Qin Gang was previously considered a close confidante of state and party leader Xi Jinping. Xi reportedly promoted the diplomat’s career personally, ignoring customs within the ministerial bureaucracy.
When he took office in 2012, Xi called for the fight against corruption and had indictments brought against tens of thousands of government employees. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign did not spare high-ranking party officials either. In China, business people or high officials keep disappearing, only to reappear in court weeks or months later. One of the most well-known cases in recent years is that of former Chinese Interpol chief Meng Hongwei, who disappeared while on a trip to China in 2018. Two years later, a Chinese court sentenced him to a long prison term for allegedly accepting bribes.
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