China foreign minister Qin Gang (left) has been removed from his post by Beijing and replaced by his predecessor Wang Yi (right). - AFP/Reuters
BEIJING (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): China removed Qin Gang as Foreign Minister on Tuesday (July 25) after just half a year on the job, and exactly a month after he disappeared from public view, spurring rampant speculation on his whereabouts.
The country’s top legislature voted to remove Qin, 57, at an urgent meeting called on Tuesday. In a surprise move, however, it reappointed former foreign minister Wang Yi, 69, to the position he had held for 10 years until the end of 2022.
No reasons were given for Qin’s removal.
Wang will continue to head the Communist Party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission General Office, which makes him the country’s top diplomat.
The meeting, confirmed only a day earlier, also saw central bank stalwart Yi Gang make way for his deputy Pan Gongsheng as governor of the People’s Bank of China.
Qin had been conspicuously absent from official duties since June 25, missing a string of key diplomatic events and meetings both at home and abroad.
Despite repeated questions from journalists at its daily briefings, the foreign ministry has kept mum about Qin’s circumstances, only saying that he had a health condition which prevented him from attending a recent Asean summit.
The secrecy surrounding Qin’s disappearance fuelled persistent rumours of an affair, an illegitimate child and espionage.
While speculation swirled outside Chinese borders, news of his absence and the rumours were scrubbed from Chinese social media and even the foreign ministry’s website, where transcripts of the daily briefings are published.
Pundits also speculated about who would take over the foreign ministry if Qin was removed. Liu Jianchao, 59, who heads the Communist Party of China’s international liaison department, and vice foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu, 59, were named as possible candidates.
Qin became one of China’s youngest foreign vice-ministers at the age of 52, following a rapid ascent in the foreign ministry – and is now also its shortest-serving foreign minister in recent times.
As chief of protocol from 2015 to 2018, he was known to meet Xi regularly when the Chinese leader hosted foreign dignitaries and, as a result, earned the President’s trust.
In 2021, Qin was sent to Washington as ambassador at the height of fraught relations between the two countries, but was called back to Beijing in 2022 and promoted to foreign minister and state councillor, a rank just below vice-premiers.
