Missing for months, China’s axed top diplomat has turned up. Or has he?

Singapore: For months, rumours have abounded in Beijing as to the whereabouts of former Chinese ambassador and foreign minister Qin Gang, after he abruptly disappeared from public view in June last year.

He has not been seen since. A veil of murkiness continues to hang over his fate even after a scoop by The Washington Post last week that said he was not only alive but also not in jail.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and ex-foreign minister Qin Gang, who has not been seen in public since June 2023.Credit: AP, Jamie Brown

Instead, Qin had been redeployed, on paper at least, to a low-level job at the World Affairs Press, a publishing house affiliated with the Foreign Ministry he had once helmed, the Post reported, citing two unnamed former US officials.

It appeared to be a humiliating end for a man whose swift downfall stunned China watchers. As a renowned loyalist to President Xi Jinping, Qin, 58, quickly ascended the ranks to become ambassador to the United States in 2021 and then top diplomat the following year before his sudden removal just seven months into the role.

On Wednesday, Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao published an article disputing the Post’s reporting and criticising it as “clickbait” while providing little evidence for its own claims. Citing an unnamed source in Beijing, the Hong Kong-based paper reported that while the publishing house did have an employee named Qin Gang, it was a different person.

The enduring opacity around Qin’s circumstances is a reminder of the Chinese Communist Party’s almost unparalleled ability to make those who fall out favour with Xi disappear with barely a trace. Former defence ministers Li Shangfu and his predecessor Wei Fenghe also vanished in quick succession last year and, in June, were expelled from the party on corruption grounds.

Defence Minister Richard Marles and his then-counterpart Lieutenant General Li Shangfu in 2023. Li has disappeared.Credit: Sydney Morning Herald

Neil Thomas, an expert in Chinese elite politics with the Asia Society Policy Institute, said a rumour of Qin’s dispatching to a menial publishing role had been circulating for months, but its veracity would likely never be proven beyond doubt.

“In the Xi era, we usually only know something for sure when the party tell us about it,” Thomas said.

Long-time China watcher Bill Bishop also believes questions remain, writing in his widely followed Sinocism newsletter that “until there is a confirmed sighting of Qin at this new job we may never be able to sure this is really the outcome of his case”.

Fall from grace

Qin’s fall from grace has been accompanied by furious speculation, backed by reports in Western media, of an alleged extramarital affair he had with a Chinese TV correspondent while in the US, with whom he is said to have fathered a child.

At a consequential meeting of CCP heavyweights in July, known as the third plenum, Qin was formally removed from his post on the party’s elite central committee. But a statement confirming his departure referred to him as a “comrade”, a sign that he would remain a member of the party, unlike the two ousted defence ministers.

Qin Gang was one of the Chinese president’s proteges.Credit: AP

“The phrase ‘still a comrade’ is a godsend for him because it means he hasn’t been arrested for corruption and thrown out of the Communist Party,” said Lowy Institute senior fellow Richard McGregor.

“But even then, we have no idea of where he is and what he’s doing and what his fate is, and the only indication of that is we have foreign news reports, which are, in turn contradicted by Hong Kong news reports.”

Adding to the intrigue, Victor Gao, the former translator for Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, told Al Jazeera in a televised interview in August that Qin had been his friend for more than 20 years, but he was guilty of corruption and deserved his fate.

“He is somewhere in China. You will never see him,” Gao said, as he defended the CCP’s “merciless” crackdown.

Since becoming leader in 2012, Xi has presided over an anti-corruption campaign that has resulted in sweeping purges of CCP cadres, with a new annual record of investigations into at least 45 senior officials announced in 2023.

The People’s Liberation Army, and in particular the rocket force section, have been heavily targeted by the anti-graft drive. Experts say there are genuine issues with corruption and bribery in connection with military procurement that may have led to the downfall of the two defence ministers.

But as the crackdown has picked up speed, it has ensnared cadres found guilty of an expanding definition of corruption that extends to vaguer crimes of violating party discipline.

“They are being found guilty of formalism or bureaucratism or basically not implementing Xi’s directives in a way deemed to be satisfactory,” Thomas said.

Separately, Xi has consolidated his power in the party’s upper echelons, with rivals pushed out of the Politburo Standing Committee, the CCP’s top leadership body, in recent years.

“If you look at people have been purged, removed, forced out – there’s many different ways of doing it – it’s all about ensuring that he has people around him who are utterly loyal and doing what he wants,” McGregor said.

“You get with the program, or you’re out.”

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