China’s ‘disappeared’ foreign minister demoted to low-level publishing job, say former U.S. officials
Qin Gang, an aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomat, had a meteoric rise and an even faster fall from grace. He’s now said to be taking a salary at a Beijing state-run bookseller.
His rise was meteoric, his fall equally abrupt. Ever since the summer of 2023, when then-Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang mysteriously disappeared from public view, his fate has been the subject of intense speculation.
Wild rumors abounded: He’d been imprisoned. Killed himself. None was true.
In fact, Qin is alive but, according to two former U.S. officials, in a position very diminished from his once-lofty perch close to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Qin has been nominally assigned to a low-level job at a publishing house affiliated with the Chinese Foreign Ministry, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.