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China’s outspoken foreign minister Qin Gang has not been seen in public for more than three weeks, missing important diplomatic engagements and prompting growing speculation about his whereabouts.
Qin did not attend a foreign ministers meeting with China’s close economic partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations trading bloc in Jakarta last week because of “health reasons”, the foreign ministry said.
Qin was also supposed to meet Europe’s top diplomat Josep Borrell this month in Beijing but postponed the meeting without providing an explanation.
Qin’s last public meetings were on June 25 with officials from Sri Lanka and Russia, according to the foreign ministry’s website. Prior to his disappearance, Qin held meetings, calls or other public exchanges with foreign counterparts nearly every other day since taking the post in late December.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Monday said she had “no information” about when Qin may return to his post. China’s “diplomatic activities were continuing normally,” she said.
Until the long absence, Qin’s star had been rising rapidly. A former foreign ministry spokesperson, he became ambassador to the US in 2021 at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries and was promoted to the Communist party’s central committee last October.
Since taking over as foreign minister, he has unleashed broadsides at the US over issues such as Taiwan before the two sides resumed dialogue last month, when he met secretary of state Antony Blinken in Beijing.
In China, disappearances of senior officials, celebrities and businesspeople are commonplace. It often later emerges that they have become embroiled in investigations or other controversies.
Among some of the most prominent cases in recent years, the former Chinese head of Interpol Meng Hongwei disappeared while travelling in China in 2018.
In 2020, he was sentenced to 13 and a half years in jail by a Chinese court for taking more than $2mn in bribes.
In February this year, investment banker Bao Fan, known for his work with the country’s rising tech companies, went missing after his company, China Renaissance, said it had been unable to contact him. A week later, the firm admitted that it had “become aware” that Bao was co-operating with an investigation.
Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai also vanished from public view in 2021 after she accused a former Chinese vice-premier of sexual misconduct. She made the claims in a social media post that was erased by censors within minutes of being published.
She later reappeared and denied her own allegations in an interview with French sports newspaper L’Equipe, saying the post was a misunderstanding and that she had deleted it herself.
The 57-year-old Qin is a member of the Communist party’s central committee, the rubber-stamp body that elects top officials and confirms other important decisions made by the senior leadership.
But he is outranked in Chinese diplomacy by Wang Yi, the Communist party’s central committee foreign affairs commission head. Wang represented China at the Asean meeting in Jakarta last week, meeting Blinken on the sidelines.
Qin’s absence has given rise to rumours about his private life on social media inside and outside of China over the past three weeks. The posts do not appear to have been completely censored — unusual given that discussions around officials’ private lives is normally heavily controlled.
The spokeswoman said she “had no knowledge of the situation” when asked about the circulating rumours.
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