U.S. stumped by mysterious absence of Chinese foreign minister

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang is missing from public view and his whereabouts are a mystery to the U.S. government, a senior Biden administration official said.

Mr. Qin, the Chinese government’s second-ranking diplomat seen as close to President Xi Jinping, was last seen in public more than three weeks ago. His absence is triggering speculation that the high-ranking Chinese official was purged for unspecified political missteps.

U.S. intelligence agencies are unaware of Mr. Qin’s status, and there are varying reports about what happened to him.

A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy said, “We are not able to give you comments now.” She referred all questions to the Foreign Ministry.

China’s government is staying quiet on the matter. Beijing cited unspecified health reasons for Mr. Qin’s original disappearance, and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Monday that she had no information on when Mr. Qin, 57, might return to his office, the Financial Times reported. Chinese diplomatic activities were proceeding normally, she said.

Mr. Qin is an outspoken critic of the United States in the style of “wolf warrior” diplomats who revel in aggressive verbal attacks. In March, he said the American strategy for the Indo-Pacific region “seeks to gang up to form exclusive blocs, stir up confrontation and undermine regional integration.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Qin criticized the American response in shooting down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon off the Carolina coast. China insisted that the air vessel was a weather balloon that had blown off course.

He was absent from a meeting of foreign ministers in Jakarta, Indonesia, last week at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The foreign ministry said at the time that health reasons caused the absence.

Mr. Qin then canceled a meeting with Josep Borrell, the European Union’s senior diplomat visiting Beijing, without explanation.

He was last seen in public at a June 25 meeting with officials from Sri Lanka and Russia, the ministry’s website states.

U.S. government sources said the matter is being closely watched as Mr. Qin was regarded as a key player in recent efforts to ease bilateral tensions and renew high-level official contacts with Beijing.

Mr. Qin was appointed foreign minister in December after a brief stint as ambassador to the United States, regarded as a plum posting for any Chinese diplomat.

Mr. Qin also has ties to Chinese intelligence and worked for a Minister of State Security think tank known as the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, or CICIR. The institute is known for its role as a vehicle for MSS operations targeting U.S. intelligence agencies. For example, CICIR hosted two CIA contractors who made regular visits in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Initially, word circulated that Mr. Qin had contracted the COVID-19 virus. That report was later ruled out by his continued absence from official events after a normal period of illness.

Another story appeared on Chinese social media sites saying Mr. Qin ran afoul of Chinese Communist Party authorities for an affair with a reporter from the People’s Liberation Army-linked outlet Phoenix Television and possibly sired a child out of wedlock.

Suspicions about Mr. Qin and the affair were based on the removal of photos from the reporter’s social media accounts around the time Mr. Qin dropped out of sight.

Doubt has been cast on that explanation because there is no precedent for a senior Chinese official being removed from office over an affair. The practice is said to be widespread among senior CCP cadres.

“We don’t really know what’s happening,” the U.S. senior official said. “We know a little bit about it.”

Rapid rise

The U.S. government official said the disappearance is unusual because Mr. Qin is known to be close to Mr. Xi and owed his rapid rise in office to the powerful Chinese leader.

His meteoric rise created some bureaucratic enemies within the foreign ministry.

Mr. Qin rose in prominence within the Chinese system faster than most other officials of his rank and age.

Initially, Mr. Qin worked as a kind of public relations assistant to Mr. Xi. During the period from 2014 through 2018, he worked with others to showcase Mr. Xi’s personal power and prestige, including changing the uniforms of the honor guard troops and adding trumpets to guards for use in presidential ceremonies.

Mr. Qin and his wife at one point showed loyalty to Mr. Xi by presenting him and Mrs. Xi with mooncakes.

“And then he was rewarded, much to the chagrin of the foreign ministry, with the ambassador job in Washington, and then from there, he has just rocketed,” the official said.

Mr. Qin currently holds the posts of foreign minister and state counselor.

His predecessor, Wang Yi, held the post from 2013 until December.

Mr. Wang appears to be filling in for Mr. Qin and met this week with visiting U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. Mr. Wang holds a higher rank than Mr. Qin and is director of the party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission, the highest-ranking diplomatic post.

Until his recent absence, Mr. Qin was thought to be on the fast track for membership in the powerful 24-member Politburo, like Foreign Minister Qian Qichen under Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Mr. Qin is currently a member of the larger, less-influential Central Committee.

“So, he’s obviously out of sight. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know if he’s going to be removed,” the senior official said. “The Chinese system is often quiet for a period and then he just comes back and there’s no sense one way or the other.”

Chinese sensitivities surrounding Mr. Qin were evident in the censoring of a news report in the pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post. Journalist Phil Cunningham said in a tweet Monday that five sentences about the missing foreign minister were cut without notice from an article he wrote for the paper.

The missing paragraphs said the cause behind the missing Mr. Qin may be illness or “political disfavor.”

Former State Department official Miles Yu said the circumstances around Mr. Qin are unusual. “The only thing that’s for sure is that he disappeared,” said Mr. Yu, now director of the Hudson Institute China Center.

Mr. Yu discounted the rumors of an affair as the cause. “The Chinese Communist Party has never disappeared one of its senior leaders on account of an extramarital affair because it’s so commonplace,” he said.

In the absence of hard evidence, other rumors linked Mr. Qin to an espionage case, Mr. Yu noted.

Most likely, Mr. Qin “made some kind of political mistake” that placed him in limbo, said Mr. Yu, adding that officials in China who interact with foreign nationals can face peril.

“We have to understand the logic of dictatorships,” he said. “It’s the arrogance of power, so the disappearance of this kind of person is commonplace and happens all the time.”

The silence surrounding the case is an indication that Mr. Xi holds absolute power and can be “wild and unpredictable,” he said.

Mr. Yu said Mr. Qin also may have been perceived as too soft on the United States.

In a speech in Colorado last summer, Mr. Qin avoided direct attacks on the United States, an unusual departure for a Chinese diplomat.