An emergency meeting on 25th July, Tuesday ensued with the removal of one of China’s youngest Foreign Ministers. Qin Gang’s brief stint as the Foreign Minister lasted for seven months before he got replaced by his predecessor Wang Yi on Tuesday. He will now resume to post as the State Councilor, to which he was appointed in March 2023 as reported by Xinhua, the official state news agency of the People’s Republic of China.
The former Foreign Minister’s cryptic disappearance since June 25, 2023, incited a wave of speculations both within and outside the country. Social Media went into a frenzy with searches on his arbitrary eviction and the month-long evasion from the public eye, preceding the event. His last meeting was with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with senior diplomats from Vietnam, Russia and Sri Lanka, in Beijing. Qin’s subsequent absence from the summit in Indonesia was vaguely associated to unspecified health problems. And when even his ministry refused to respond to any concerns raised over his sudden disappearance, it ushered in a wave of rumors, pervading his political and personal space.
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All planned meeting since, were either cancelled or substituted for by Wang. Wang had also represented China at diplomatic summits in Jakarta and Johannesburg. Qin, once a former ambassador to the US and a close confidant of President Xi Jinping, earned the repute of ‘Warrior Gang’ while pushing China’s wolf-warrior diplomacy. Having attributed Qin’s descent to China’s leader, Daniel Russel -from the Asia Society Policy Institute- in conversation with the BBC, calls the sudden move an ‘embarrassing lapse in judgement at the top.'
