The fate and whereabouts of former Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang are shrouded in mystery and controversy. Reports are suggesting that he may have died in late July at a military hospital in Beijing, as mentioned in a December 6 Politico report.
The brouhaha around Qin offers a rare glimpse into the current state of Chinese politics. A deep understanding of Chinese political history and the power struggle within the party is needed to resolve the conundrum.
No one believes in the official narrative
Qin’s sudden disappearance from the public and subsequent replacement by his processor Wang Yi, an unusual if not unprecedented political move, was explained by the official media as due to his “poor health.” This was a convenient but flimsy excuse: Qin looked robust and spirited in his last public appearance and, at 58, was widely considered a rising political star placed on the fast lane of career development by none other than Xi Jinping himself.
As recent as 2018, Qin, serving as Director of Protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was only a minor functionary in the official hierarchy of the Central Government. He was promoted to be one of the three Vice Ministers of the Ministry in the same year. He went on to become the Ambassador to the United States in 2021, a coup in his career due to the position’s prominence and the strong signal of his certainty of becoming a core element of the Party’s central leadership.
Predictably, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in December 2022 while still officially the US ambassador and joined the political elite as a State Councilor in March 2023. His meteoric rise at a young age suggested a long and luminous political career ahead and implied a sound health condition.
Extramarital infidelity is a ruse
Further complicating the situation are rumors and speculations surrounding Qin’s personal life. These include allegations of an extramarital affair with a celebrity journalist, Fu Xiaotian, leading to the birth of a child in the United States. The Wall Street Journal reported on September 19 that senior officials were told Qin’s dismissal was due to “lifestyle problems.”
The iniquity of this type is most common in China, especially among the political elites. Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli’s lover, tennis star Peng Shuai, revealed their relationship on social media, only bringing stigma to herself, with Zhang’s reputation and privileged life intact. Former President Jiang Zemin and current leader Xi Jinping were both rumored to have had extramarital romances.
“Qin is fine” is not fine
The recent passing of Kissinger reminds us of Western scholars in lockstep with Zhongnanhai. In an apparent effort to assist Xi Jinping, Asia Society Policy Institute’s Neil Thomas responded to Politico’s expose as fake news. In his X posts, he wrote, “Qin Gang was an upstart who barely knew Xi compared to top allies. Li Shangfu (the ousted defense minister, added here by the author) hadn’t worked under Xi. The inner circle is more senior people like Li Qiang, Cai Qi & He Lifeng who go back decades with Xi and/or are working directly by his side.”
While Thomas never ventured a guess about who had the power to groom Qin as an upstart, he should know that Zhou Enlai himself acted as China’s foreign minister while serving as Premier until 1958. China’s foreign minister historically has been identical to the State Secretary of the US in its functionality and influence.
According to a Newsweek article by Aadil Brar, Thomas also indicated that a heart attack could have caused Qin’s alleged death, eerily evoking Li Keqiang’s death in the swimming pool. “Also heard he was coming back to work. There are always rumors. Can’t know if true,” he wrote, sowing more confusion.
Leaking of rocket army secret is a remote possibility
A more serious, widespread, and creditable speculation concerns the seemingly unrelated removal of several top leaders of China’s elite rocket force in August, including its top commander Li Yuchao. This theory suggests that Li’s son provided top secrets to the US, resulting in a 255-page publication of a report on the rocket force by the US Air University in October 2022.
The publication, the theory claims, coincided with the conclusion of the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an event highlighted by Xi’s menacing words against Taiwan independence. The 255 page report details organizational structure of the rocket force down to the level of the units installed at villages.
Under Xi’s watch, the rocket force was restructured and promoted as the ultimate strategic deterrence against Taiwan and the US, and so the publication was humiliating to the Chinese leadership as it indicated that the US had possessed intimate knowledge about the rocket force.
The theory implicated Qin in the saga by a tenuous linkage: the leakage occurred while he was the Ambassador in the US, and he chose not to report it. This reasoning is illogical because the rocket force and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs –and the US Embassy—are too far apart in scope of operations: How could Qin know there was an intelligence leakage unless he was briefed by a third party? And the most likely candidate for this third party usually is the central government, which, according to Politico, didn’t know it until the visit of Andrey Rudenko, Deputy Russian Foreign Minister, in June this year.
Lin Biao Incident: The key to the conundrum?
While there have been speculations about a ‘Stalin-like’ purge by Xi Jinping within the Chinese political elite, the extent –and the motives –of the shakeup, involving removals of freshly-appointed foreign and defense ministers, still feels like a Deja vu.
Even by the standard of repressive regimes, the political melodrama of Qin’s downfall has few parallels. However, a careful student of contemporary Chinese history may have seen a pattern emerging from the recent spate of intrigues and deaths that is almost a replay of an equally shocking and twisty incident half a century ago: Lin Biao and the coup of his son Lin Liguo.
The most celebrated Communist general in the Chinese civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, Lin Bao, was sanctioned to be Mao’s heir apparent in 1969. His desire to assume power sooner and his son Liguo’s dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in a political manifesto called the 571 Project and an attempt to assassinate Mao. When the coup failed, the Lin family, including Ye Qun, Lin Biao’s wife, tried to defect to the Soviet Union on September 13, 1971, but all died in a mysterious plane crash in Mongolia.
On September 14, Zhou announced to the Politburo that four of the highest-ranking military officials in China, all Lin’s long-time close associates, were immediately suspended from duty. The announcement was quickly followed by the arrest of ninety-three people suspected of being close to Lin. The National Day celebrations on October 1, 1971, were cancelled. The news of Lin’s death was announced to all Communist Party officials in mid-October 1971 and to the Chinese public in November. The news was publicly received with shock and confusion.
The similarities of the two incidents are striking. Here are some obvious ones.
A Déjà vu of a coup attempt?
Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping have been the two most authoritarian leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. Their demand for absolute power might make them out of touch with reality and insensitive to discontent and resentment in senior leadership ranks.
Both were orchestrated by high-ranking military officials. In the case of Lin Biao, it was his son, Lin Liguo, a senior official of the Air Force, and his “unified fleet” cohorts, such as Zhou Yuchi. In the latter case, it was the leadership of the rocket force, such as the top commander, Li Yuchao; his deputy Liu Guangbin; and former deputy Zhang Zhenzhong.
Both showed inclination to receive support from the US and its allies. A six-month investigation by Western scholars in 1994 found that Lin had attempted to contact the Kuomintang in Taiwan on two separate occasions shortly before his death. The findings of Lin’s attempt to contact the Kuomintang supported earlier rumors from inside China that Lin was secretly negotiating with Chiang Kai-shek’s government to restore the Kuomintang government in mainland China in return for a high position in the new government.
Under Xi’s leadership, the revamped rocket force, formerly known as the No. 2 artillery force, attained the same status as the army, navy, and air force to become his trump card in launching a military campaign against Taiwan. The Pentagon has also acknowledged its grave concerns about the potential threats from China’s rocket force.
Ironically, the enhanced prestige and support has sent shudders down the spines of the rocket force because they know they have become the prime target of the US military, the most advanced in the world. The hi-tech nature of the rocket force could mean they could be victims in the first wave of any US attack should there be a US-China military conflict. They were also motivated to have a regime change because that should be the ultimate solution for their safety.
Both were shrouded in mystique and led to significant rearrangements of political events. Mao had ordered the early staging of the Party’s Ninth Congress to clean up the ramifications of Lin, and Xi decided to delay the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee.
Both tapped top civilian national leaders to be caretakers if their efforts succeed. It was evident in Lin’s case; but who would be such a personality in the case of the rocket force? A young, ambitious, pro-west Qin Gang could be tapped as a future leader like Lin Liguo was in the 1970s. But Qin Gang needed someone who could offer a steady hand and endorsement in the wake of the immediate tumult, someone with political clout and reputation like former liberal-minded Premier Li Keqiang. The sudden death of Li Keqiang in a swimming pool in October thus explained a lot of things.
There are, of course, nonobvious similarities and even dissimilarities between the two sagas. The two incidents occurred in entirely different periods of Sino-US relationships. In Lin’s case, it would have been logistically impossible to have any contact with the US, the country’s avowed enemy, without diplomatic relations. In Qin Gang’s case, America is a top trading partner of China, and the US can pull strings behind the scenes. One way or the other, the role of the US shouldn’t change the contour of both incidents.
Conclusion
The puzzle of Qin Gang is not about himself but the current political predicament in China. Outsiders have likely focused on the wrong questions about Qin’s status. The radical reshuffling of the top echelon of the Chinese regime indicates a seismic internal change that can be compared to the Lin Biao incident in magnitude, irrespective of the limited roles played by the US and Russia.
Non-Chinese prognosticators could be baffled by telltale signs of Qin’s subservient loyalty to Xi–isn’t it true that he once called up a foreign colleague in the middle of the night to count the number of steps of a museum’s staircase so that the welcoming music should be perfectly timed during Xi’s visit the next day?
Ironically, Mao’s Little Red Book, a small booklet quoting Mao’s sayings that can be easily tucked away for public gatherings and indoctrination meetings, was an invention of Lin Biao himself. As the most visible totem of the Cultural Revolution that captured all its insanity, the Little Red Book was prefaced by Lin and was spread from the People’s Liberation Army when he was the defense minister to become a national craze eventually. Like Qin, the ubiquitous images of Lin toting or waving a copy of the Red Book in Mao’s presence confused the Chinese public when the news of his death was shared.
While Lin’s failed defection effectively announced the end of Mao’s personality cult and built the foundation for China’s eventual reform, the implication to Xi Jinping of the brewing crisis nominally centered on Qin Gang remains to be seen.
Today’s China is embroiled in a political upheaval on a similar scale to the one gripping the country half a century ago. The fate and the enigma of Lin and Qin will be associated with them as a most poignant, personal footnote.
Watch Lei’s previous live stream here:
