China yesterday refused to disclose why Qin Gang (秦剛) had been sacked as foreign minister, insisting it was releasing information “normally,” despite him having not been seen publicly for more than a month.
Qin was removed from office by Beijing’s top lawmaking body on Tuesday after just 207 days in the job, following weeks of speculation that the former ambassador to the US and confidant of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had fallen out of favor.
Asked at a regular briefing about his removal, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mao Ning (毛寧) referred journalists to a state news agency article and declined to offer any further information.
Photo: AFP
“Xinhua has already published information. You can refer to that,” Mao said.
Asked how she evaluated Qin’s brief stint as foreign minister, Mao said that she was “probably not the right person to answer that question.”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to pass judgement,” she said, adding that China was “releasing normal information” concerning Qin’s position.
Pressed repeatedly by journalists to provide more details about Qin’s fate, Mao said that decisions made on Tuesday by China’s top lawmaking body and the president were “very clear.”
“I suggest you all refer to that. I don’t have any additional information,” she said.
“China’s diplomatic activities are all advancing steadily,” Mao added.
Any reference to 57-year-old Qin had been removed from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Web site as of yesterday.
A search for his name yielded no results and previous articles about his diplomatic appearances showed a message saying the page “does not exist or has been deleted.”
His name did appear on other Chinese government Web sites, including the State Council, the Ministry of Commerce and state media outlets.
Qin has been replaced as foreign minister by top diplomat Wang Yi (王毅).
The foreign ministry had dodged questions about Qin for weeks, after previously saying that “health reasons” were to blame for his absence.
“If he were a comrade in good standing who had fallen ill, I am not sure that would be happening,” China analyst Bill Bishop wrote in his Sinocism newsletter.
Neil Thomas, a fellow on Chinese politics at the US think tank Asia Society Policy Institute, agreed.
“Evidence is emerging suggesting this is indeed a political purge,” Thomas wrote on Twitter.
China remained tight-lipped for weeks about the fate of Qin, who has not been seen in public since June 25, when he met Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrey Rudenko in Beijing.
That did little to stem an explosion of rumors online, some of which claimed the diplomat’s alleged affair with a prominent television anchor had landed him in hot water.
“People from the outside are totally in the dark and the episode illustrates that Chinese politics is becoming increasingly unpredictable and volatile, though under a calm surface,” said Ho-fung Hung (孔誥烽), an expert in Chinese politics at Johns Hopkins University.
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