New Delhi: Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang is missing in action for nearly one month now. In fact, Wang Yi, Director of China’s Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, is attending the 13th Meeting of BRICS National Security Advisers and High Representatives on National Security in Johannesburg starting from August 24.
The absence of Qin from the public eye has mounted speculations about his fate in a country known for its opaqueness about dealing with senior officials and their private lives. The absence of Qin from the ASEAN framework meetings in Jakarta earlier this month raised eyebrows all over. Wang, who is senior to Qin in the Chinese political hierarchy, had instead represented Beijing in the ASEAN meetings.
Qin was last seen in public when he held a meeting with Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ali Sabry in Beijing on June 25. After that, he completely disappeared from the public eye. The Chinese Foreign Ministry too has been evasive while responding to media’s queries about Qin.
“I have no understanding of the matter that you’ve raised,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said earlier this month while asked about Qin during a regular press briefing. Then again, when asked about the same issue last week, Mao responded by saying that she does not have any understanding of the matter.
Qin, believed to be among the close circle of Chinese President Xi Jinping, had previously served as Chinese Ambassador to the US from 2021 to 2023, vice minister of foreign affairs of China from 2018 to 2021, Director of Protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2015 to 2018, and Director of Information at Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2011 to 2015. He was made Chinese Foreign Minister In December last year, superseding other senior officials.
Qin has been described as a “Wolf Warrior” in Chinese diplomacy by the media. Wolf warrior diplomacy is confrontational and combative with its proponents denouncing any perceived criticism of the Chinese government, its ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and associated policies on social media and in interviews, as well as using physical violence against protestors and dissidents. As an attempt to gain "discourse power" in international politics, wolf warrior diplomacy forms one part of new foreign policy strategies called Xi Jinping's ‘Major Country Diplomacy’ which has legitimised a more active role for China on the world stage, including engaging in an open ideological struggle with the Western world.
Then, why has Qin disappeared from the public eye? According to speculations, Qin might have lost the favour of XI after having got into an extramarital affair with a journalist, Fu Xiaotian. According to reports, Qin has a child out of wedlock with Fu. Western observers believe that Qin must have been put under Liuzhi, China’s system for extra-legal detention, for his personal indiscretion. According to Peter Dahlin, Director of the European human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders, Qin is “presumed” to be under “discipline investigation” in Liuzhi.
“He is one of some 140,000+ persons who disappeared into Liuzhi and #RSDL under #XiJinping,” Dahlin tweeted. Liuzhi or ‘retention in custody’ is not part of China’s criminal justice system. Instead, it is run by a non-judicial, non-law enforcement body called the National Supervision Commission (NSC). Founded in 2018, the NSC can place anyone related to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the State, as well as those working for or loosely related to State-owned enterprises or public institutions – such as hospitals, schools, etc. – into Liuzhi. Conditions of Liuzhi mirror the better-known Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL) system. It is in reality a private police force run by the CCP, with its own private, secret, detention facilities.
Those put in the Liuzhi system are not allowed legal counsel and are kept at facilities not part of the judicial system, are managed by investigators not classified as ‘judicial personnel’, and can be held for up to six months.
“So many stories on Chinese FM QinGang's possible placement under ‘discipline inspection’, yet almost no one writes a single line about the Liuzhi system used during such investigations, which is the most interesting, and horrifying,” Dahlin said in a separate tweet. “Everyone is talking about the new normal of how China’s foreign minister Qin Gang (went) missing,” Rayhan Asat, an Uyghur lawyer and human rights advocate who is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council, tweeted. “China’s powerful elites can disappear. Think about all the Uyghur families.” As of now, the fate of 57-year-old Qin, a fluent English speaker, can only be speculated about.
