China’s foreign minister Qin Gang disappears for weeks amid affair rumours

Qin Gang, 57, is one of Beijing’s highest-profile personalities.

He’s a personal favourite of Chairman Xi Jinping.

He’s an outspoken, ultranationalist “wolf warrior” diplomat.

He’s a former ambassador to the US.

He’s been fast-tracked into the Chinese Communist Party’s inner circle.

He became one of China’s youngest Foreign Ministers in December.

But, six months into the top job – he’s been vanished.

China’s Foreign Ministry is struggling to evade repeated questions about his whereabouts. And Party censors are strangely allowing this information vacuum to be filled on social media platforms with unsubstantiated rumours.

These offer a smorgasbord of scandal.

Qin is hiding a heart attack. Or Covid. Or both.

Qin backed a nuclear rocket force commander who later became a spy for the United States.

Qin is embroiled in a massive corruption scheme.

Qin had a love child in the US through an extramarital affair with a Hong Kong TV personality.

“It is a very bad look for the PRC to have their foreign minister disappear for over three weeks,” said prominent analyst Bill Bishop on his Sharp China podcast.

“The absence of any information since his last appearance … just fuels the rumours, from health to an affair and child out of wedlock to being caught up in a spy case.

“It’s my personal guess that it is less and less likely to be a simple health issue.”

What’s love got to do with it?

“You people, you either eat and drink yourselves into the grave – or die between the sheets,” Chairman Xi famously complained of China’s ruling class when he rose to power in 2012.

The most substantial rumour surrounding Qin’s downfall fits this profile.

Qin’s foreign ministry website profile says he is married and has a son.

But the rumour asserts he had an affair while ambassador to the US with Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV personality Fu Xiaotian.

Chinese netizens have applied their collective open-source intelligence skills to support the claim.

Fu apparently had a baby last year – about nine months after interviewing Qin.

She’s posted pictures of the infant on social media. These sometimes include her parents. But never the as-yet-unnamed father.

She commented on social media posts celebrating Qin’s birthday, and again when he was promoted into the Communist Party’s Central Committee.

And the Cambridge University-educated journalist has not been heard from since April 10, when she posted pictures from a luxury private jet in Los Angeles that appears to have been en route to Beijing.

“This lead to all sorts of speculation that this was an extramarital affair,” Bishop said.

“And this was a child born out of wedlock in the US, which means it’s eligible for a US passport.”

Photos of Fu and her baby in a $A90,000-a-month California mansion add to the sense of scandal.

“That’s not something a TV anchor would be able to afford,” Bishop added.

“So somebody was paying for these flights.”

The joint US-China citizen has not been seen since returning to China in April.

“Whether or not she is related to his absence, there have been several articles on the PRC internet attacking her, which seems interesting given that if the system wanted to protect Qin, it would be easy to scrub her name,” Bishop added in his Sinocism newsletter.

“So that, of course, has triggered more speculation.”

The illusion of truth

On Monday, Qin’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Wang Wenbin insisted she had “no understanding” of the rumours surrounding his fate.

“The foreign reporters are clearly having some fun putting her on the spot,” said Bishop.

“If she says the wrong thing, it’s going to be really bad for her career. I honestly don’t think she knows what to say.

“And so until there’s a directive from the very top of how this is going to be handled, the system is frozen.”

Video clips of the uncomfortable exchange were posted to the Chinese social media platform Weibo. They were not removed. And this absence of censorship is itself fuelling speculation of an internal power struggle.

“Something definitely went wrong,” one viewer comment reads.

“Most likely under investigation,” another added.

“These rumours are driven by a lack of transparency in the Chinese political system, in which information is closely guarded and important decisions are mostly made behind closed doors,” former Communist Party newspaper editor Deng Yuwen told US media.

If Qin is the subject of a disciplinary investigation, that’s a big deal.

“Replacing a foreign minister, who is also a Central Committee member, is not simple,” Bishop explained.

Qin would have been examined closely for his suitability. Especially before being appointed to the Central Committee. And again before becoming Foreign Minister.

“You would assume he would have been vetted for this promotion,” Bishop said.

“So whoever was in charge of that vetting obviously either didn’t think it was a big deal … or they missed it.

“But then someone who wanted to embarrass Qin Gang or embarrass Xi Jinping got all this information together and leaked it. We just don’t know”.

Fallen angels

“There’s something everyone is talking about but can’t be talked about publicly,” teased Hu Xijin, fellow “wolf warrior” and former editor-in-chief of the Communist Party’s Global Times news service at the weekend.

“Disclosing information would help improve official credibility and convey confidence to the private sector.”

The last public record of Qin on the job was on June 25, when he met the foreign ministers of Russia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.

Nothing was heard of him for another ten days. He failed to show up during the visit by New Zealand’s Prime Minister to Beijing.

He also didn’t greet the leaders of Vietnam or Mongolia.

That’s when Beijing – without explanation – abruptly cancelled a meeting between Qin and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell just two days before he was due to travel to China.

Then, on July 12, Beijing said senior diplomat Wang Yi (who also happens to be Qin’s superior within the Politburo) would take his place at the ASEAN summit in Jakarta.

“State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang is unable to attend this series of foreign ministers’ meetings due to health reasons,” the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman simply stated.

Wang is Quin’s predecessor as foreign minister. The 69-year-old now leads the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Foreign Affairs. Qin is his junior.

Wang is part of Beijing’s old guard.

Qin isn’t.

The 57-year-old was, however, clearly a favourite of Chairman Xi.

But the status of this rising star remains in doubt.

On Wednesday, China’s ambassador to the US was asked if elder statesman Henry Kissinger would get to meet with Qin. Xie Feng answered: “Well, let’s wait and see”.

And there’s little sign Qin will return to the top diplomatic job any time soon.

Beijing announced Wang will replace Qin at the 13th Meeting of BRICS National Security Advisers and High Representatives on National Security in Johannesburg next week.

“It is just remarkable how dysfunctional it makes the system look right now and how paralysed this system is,” Bishop said.

“It’s become so centralised under Xi that everybody is just waiting for a signal from the top about how to deal with it.”

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel