The Missing Minister: The Vanishing of Qin Gang

0:28Hey, it's Ryan.

0:33The last day that Qin Gang, China's then foreign minister, was seen in public was on June 25th of last year. It was a hot, humid day in Beijing. And according to his official schedule, Qin spent some of that day carrying out his foreign minister duties as usual. Mostly, this meant meeting other foreign ministers. We know from Qin Gang's official schedule that he met with Sri Lanka's foreign minister. That's Chief China Correspondent Ling Ling Wei. Qin and the Sri Lankan foreign minister discussed China's Belt and Road Initiative. They shook hands and snapped a picture in front of their country's flags.

1:20We know he met with the Vietnamese foreign minister and that they talked about the Vietnamese prime minister's visit to China. Another handshake, another picture, in front of another set of flags. And Chinggong also met with a representative from Russia, one of China's key partners. Russia's deputy foreign minister, Andrei Rudenko, was in town that day. A photo from the day shows Chin and Rudenko striding out of a building mid-conversation. Chin is tall with rimless glasses. He looks relaxed and confident. And he had reason to be. Chin was foreign minister, the country's top diplomat. He was a member of the upper echelon of the political elite, and he had the backing of China's powerful leader, Xi Jinping.

2:22Qin had risen high and was expected to keep rising. But instead, after that day in June, Qin disappeared. All of a sudden, you know, people kind of realized they hadn't seen Chinggong on TV, on state media reports, anywhere. He just sort of like vanished all of a sudden from public view. He even skipped some meetings, very important international meetings. So that basically triggered a lot of speculation, especially on social media, about his whereabouts, what had happened to him. Online, people were asking, where is Qin Gang?

3:23Foreign journalists in Beijing began pressing China's foreign ministry for answers. Does the foreign ministry have any updates on Qin Gang and when he will return to duties? Is he the subject of a corruption probe? The foreign ministry didn't provide any clear explanation. And now, over a year after Qin Gang vanished, he still hasn't been seen in public. We asked the foreign ministry about Qin's whereabouts and the circumstances of his disappearance, and they had no comment.

4:02When Qin Gang disappeared, do you remember what your reaction was? I was really shocked. This is a guy who was so trusted by Xi Jinping, so close to him. What could he have done wrong? That was my biggest question. What the heck did he do? Such a swift fall of a protege of Xi Jinping? Ling Ling says it stood out as unusual. She couldn't explain it. So she started digging. Over the last year, she's spoken to dozens of people. Hey, guys. I'm about to go into a meeting. And she's been reporting back to us along the way. I do think we're really on the right track here. And obviously the story is extremely sensitive and we want to exercise extreme caution to make sure...

4:59I've been a reporter for the journal for 16 years. This really has been the hardest nut to crack so far. This story is about Qin Gang, a Chinese political star whose rise was abruptly cut short. But it's also a story about the man who elevated him in the first place. The man who has ruled China with an iron fist for over a decade, Xi Jinping. And what we've discovered gives us a peek behind the veil of one of the most opaque and powerful governments in the world.

5:46From The Journal, I'm Kate Leinbaugh, and this is The Missing Minister. a three-part investigation into the mysterious disappearance of China's foreign minister. Episode 1, The Vanishing of Qin Gan.

6:20When Qinggang vanished, he was at the peak of his power. At 57, he was one of China's youngest ever foreign ministers. But we talked to someone who knew him when he was still at the very bottom of the political ladder. What I remember about Qin Gong was, first of all, I remember him as tall, but I'm pretty short, so that's relative. Sarah Lubman was a reporter in China back in the late 80s and early 90s. She worked at an American news agency called UPI, covering, among other things, the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. It was at UPI that Sarah got to know the future foreign minister.

7:02Chin was in his 20s then, a low-level government worker assigned to UPI. His job was to help journalists like Sarah navigate China, to translate, book trips, and monitor Chinese news. I do remember him as a very kind of lanky guy. I also remember him as kind of arrogant. So he had not a chip on his shoulder, but there was just something about his manner that suggested that this job was beneath him, which he may have been because his English was really good. He was clearly very smart. He was clearly very ambitious. Sarah and Chin worked together in a converted apartment in one of Beijing's diplomatic compounds.

7:46It was a long kind of railroad apartment, right, with two rooms next to each other. And Qin Gang would sit in one room, and the correspondents were in the other room where all the computer monitors were. And when we wanted to watch the news, we would go into that next room.

8:07But Sarah says translators like Qin weren't just there to be helpful. They were also there to keep an eye on UPI's journalists. We just assumed that they were reporting back on what we were doing. Really? Yeah. I mean, that was just assumed. Then look, they were government assigned, and I'm sure that they were there to support us, but also to keep tabs on us, I have no doubt.

8:34The one concrete memory I have of working with him is of watching a newscast with him, and a phrase came up that I didn't know. And so I turned to him to say, hey, can you tell me what they just said? And he was kind of tipped back in his chair. I mean, he was not leaning forward, intently listening to the news. He was kind of tipped back in his chair like, yeah, I can't believe I need to do this. But when I turned to him and said, hey, what did they say? He snapped to attention. He tipped his chair back forward and told me immediately what they'd said. So clearly, even when he was just half listening, He got the sense this was a job he could do in his sleep.

9:11Sarah realized, even then, that Qin was operating below his potential, that given the chance, he could go far. She just didn't realize how far. When he became foreign minister, a friend of mine who'd been a reporter in China called me and said, do you remember Qin Gong from the UPI Bureau? And I said, yeah. And he said, that's the foreign minister. And I was just flabbergasted. that that same kind of gangly, kind of cocky kid was now foreign minister.

9:47There's an expectation about how you rise through the Chinese political ranks. And it's not generally a fast process. You're supposed to put in your time and move up rung by rung. That's how most of Qin's career at the foreign ministry went. He did various stints at the Chinese embassy in London, and he worked as a foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing, where he responded to reporters' questions with scripted talking points.

10:19But then, something happened that would put Qin on the fast track. He got a new job and a new boss, one who did things differently.

10:36In 2012, Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Communist Party, and the following year, President of China.

10:50Xi Jinping is the most powerful, the most forceful Chinese leader in recent decades. Ever since he came to power in late 2012, Xi Jinping basically has embarked on this never-ending effort to centralize power into his own hands. Xi Jinping basically made himself the chairman of everything in China. Soon after Xi came to power, Qin landed a job that would put him in close proximity to Xi. In 2014, Chin became Xi's chief of protocol at the foreign ministry. Protocol shouldn't be confused with sort of which fork to use at dinner and whether the fish knife goes on the left or the right of the butter knife.

11:50It's organizing the movements of the leaders and the moving parts of a visit. That's Danny Russell. He was a diplomat at the State Department during the Obama administration. And he worked with Chin a few times when Chin was chief of protocol. Like in 2015, when Chin accompanied Xi on his first official visit to the U.S. Do you remember any stories from Chin Gang at that time? I do have a recollection of Qinggang and the Chinese team being really passionate and angst-ridden over the possibility that there could be a protest that would, you know, impinge on the eyeballs of Xi Jinping, of the leader.

12:41I think there was almost a sense of terror that if something as embarrassing and politically shameful as that were to occur, that they were going down with the ship. Wow.

12:58Another person familiar with the rough and tumble of official visits is former U.S. diplomat Rick Waters. These visits are, you know, traumatic for those of us who have to organize them. The U.S. team rolls in heavy with a few dozen planes, and your carefully choreographed effort immediately falls apart at first contact with reality. Rick was working at the State Department when tensions with China were ratcheting up during the Trump administration. He helped organize President Trump's visit to Beijing in 2017. And there was one moment during that visit that stuck with him. It happened when Chinese security stopped a U.S.

13:39military aide from entering a meeting room. You know, we were in the Great Hall of the People for the meeting with Xi Jinping, and the security details got into a giant fistfight right outside the meeting room. What? Yeah. And, you know, at the time, there was a mid-level foreign ministry official named Qin Gong, and he and I were the only ones in the room, and we were trying to pull these people off of each other, They were in a full-blown brawl 10 feet outside the meeting room where Xi and Trump were together. And on that visit, did you notice anything about how Chin handled that moment and sort of the tensions between Trump and Xi at the time?

14:22Well, he didn't manage the policy, right? He was often not in the innermost room when they were talking about policy either. But, you know, what I saw is that the parts of the system that organized visits, they had a certain deference to him. And I think it's because they knew that he was an up-and-comer in the system and someone to whom they needed to be responsive because he was clearly empowered by Xi's office to manage what was a very important event for them at the time.

14:55Chin wasn't in the room where the big policy decisions were being made. Not yet. But as chief of protocol, he earned Xi's trust. And with Xi's backing, he would be catapulted to the highest echelons of China's political system. And on to the global stage. That's next.

15:30In 2021, Qin Gong arrived in Washington, D.C. to start a new job. It's a great honor for me to be ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the United States of America. Standing between Chinese and American flags, Qin made his first remarks as China's new man in D.C. I firmly believe that the door of China-U.S. relations, which is already open, cannot and should not be closed. This is the trend of the world, the call of the times, and the will of the people. For Qin, it was an important promotion. Just three years earlier, he'd been chief of protocol at the foreign ministry. Now, he was Beijing's voice in Washington.

16:32That appointment in 2021 was quite a surprise decision. That's our colleague Ling Ling again. Qinggang didn't have much of a U.S. experience. And the thinking was, based on officials familiar with the matter, The reason why Xi Jinping picked him for such an important job was mostly because Xi Jinping really trusted him. He believed that Qin Gang would be able to present China's story well in Washington. But to present that story, Qin Gang had to build relationships in D.C. And that was tough going. He was very unpopular among the policy people and even quite a few of the business leaders. Here's Danny, one of the former diplomats we heard from earlier.

17:31I think they found him arrogant, even impolite, and at other times highly formulaic. I don't know how he was dealing with his in-government counterparts, in part because they refused to meet with him for the better part of a year while he was in Washington. That's another story. What? Why did they refuse to meet with him? I may be putting it a little bit strongly, but, you know, he arrived during a very chilly moment in U.S.-China relations. At that time, President Biden had recently come into the White House. But the change in administration didn't change much about the U.S.-China relationship.

18:14The two countries were still at odds over a long list of issues. Taiwan, trade, espionage. And the disputes were getting personal. The new U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, was getting beastly treatment by the Chinese who just shut him out mercilessly. And I think in some circles, there was certainly a view that said, you know what, let's give them a taste of their own medicine. A little quid pro quo. Right. Try a little quid pro quo. Here's some reciprocity for you, buddy. A State Department spokesperson said Ambassador Burns has had good access to Chinese officials during his tenure, but that there have been times when Chinese officials have refused to meet with him.

19:07Chin was trying to find his footing in the D.C. scene. But even amongst his colleagues, Chin wasn't always popular. He was known as a very strict manager, very hands-on manager. You know, he would publicly scold an underling for very little mistakes. So that kind of style earned him some resentment from others within the foreign ministry. And it was also well known that he has had some women issues. Chin was married and he had a son. But according to Lingling's sources, Chin also had affairs. You know, that's what we have heard from officials back in China. But at least, you know, back then, as long as you had the top leader's trust, all those issues were negligible.

20:09It didn't matter. You had women issues or other issues. As long as you had the top leader's trust, you're fine. Chin did have Xi's trust. So much so that at the end of 2022, less than two years into Qin's ambassadorship, Xi handed him another promotion, foreign minister, one of China's most important political posts. And this is the fun part. Most of the time when he was in D.C., he couldn't even get meetings with Biden officials. Yeah. So after the promotion, people were like calling him and trying to meet with him. His lonely Washington life was suddenly transformed with people returning his phone calls.

20:59Exactly, exactly. That appointment was truly mind-boggling to me. I was kind of stunned. And I think many of my friends and counterparts in the Chinese foreign ministry were similarly surprised. This was a case where Xi Jinping just reached into the system and plucked a loyal aide, some might say a toady, not out of obscurity, but certainly disrupted the sort of natural order, the protocol order in terms of age and service, seniority. In fact, Ling Ling's reporting shows Qin wasn't the foreign ministry's first pick for the job. He wasn't even their second or third pick. Based on reporting, the foreign policy establishment in China recommended three names.

22:00to the top leader, Xi Jinping, you know, who should be the next foreign minister. Qin Gang wasn't one of them. So in the end, it was really Xi Jinping himself who decided to name him foreign minister. So Xi gave him the job. Then, a few months later, Xi tacked on yet another fancy title. He made Qin not just foreign minister, but state counselor. basically elevating Qin to a senior position in his cabinet. Qin's predecessor had waited five years before getting that promotion. And that was really extraordinary. What did that promotion say to you? What it told me is that China has now entered an imperial era in which the leader, call him general secretary, call him president, call him emperor, doesn't really matter, the singular leader now makes all of these personnel decisions, makes all decisions.

23:10So I think I took it much less as a story about Qin Gang and much more as a revelation about Xi Jinping.

23:27So then it's July of last year. Qin's been foreign minister for about half a year. And people start to notice that he's sort of gone missing. What happens from there? Initially, the foreign ministry was very silent on questions about his whereabouts. Then one day in July, the spokesperson at the foreign ministry basically said he was absent for quote-unquote health reasons. What did you think of that? In Chinese system, health reasons are often cited for officials who have, you know, basically fallen out of favor or gone into some kind of trouble. So the health reason explanations to me did sound like a cover for something else, something more problematic.

24:36And then, in September of last year, Ling Ling got a scoop. She reported that the Chinese government had conducted an investigation into Qin, and senior Chinese officials were briefed on it. Those high-ranking officials were told that Qin's removal from the foreign minister job was due to, quote, lifestyle issues, which basically is a common party euphemism for sexual misconduct. They were specifically told that he had a fair while serving as a Chinese ambassador to the United States.

25:22And did that explanation make sense to you? It didn't make a lot of sense to me because high-ranking officials in China, they have affairs all the time. It's never the reason why someone would get into serious trouble like this. There must have been something else. Something else. When Ling Ling published her story about Qin's investigation last year, she didn't know what that something else was. It was such a difficult story to report out, given the fact that, you know, China doesn't have any kind of transparency or accountability to speak of. Chinese politics are steeped in secrecy. Even people within the Chinese government might only know parts of Qin's story, the parts the leadership wanted them to know.

26:19But Ling Ling kept digging. And she did have one thread to pull on. According to her sources, senior Chinese officials were told that Qin had been investigated because of an affair. But not just any affair. They were told that this affair could have compromised China's national security. My ears perked up. It was very intriguing. what could have a fair possibly compromised China's national security. Turns out it all had to do with this one woman, the woman he had an affair with. Her name is Fu Xiaotian. Fu Xiaotian, a rising star in her own profession, with friends in high places, who would face a downfall just as mysterious as Chin Gong's.

27:22That's next time on The Missing Minister. Listen to episodes two and three now. They're already in your feed. The Missing Minister is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. I'm your host, Kate Leinbaugh. This series was produced by Annie Minoff and Alan Rodriguez Espinosa. It was reported by Maria Byrne and Ling Ling Wei. It was edited by Maria Byrne. Mary Mathis is our fact checker. Sound design and mixing by Griffin Tanner. Music direction by Nathan Singapok. Music in this episode by Nathan Singapok and Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Nathan Singapok.

28:09Special thanks to Catherine Brewer, Elena Cherney, Laura Morris, Philana Patterson, Sarah Platt, Heather Rogers, and Aruna Vishwanatha. Thanks for listening.