From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   After Ousting a Top Official, China Erases Him and Evades Questions   
   By David Pierson, July 27, 2023, NY Times   
   China’s abrupt removal of Qin Gang as foreign minister did not stop the   
   questions that had dogged Chinese officials in the month since he vanished   
   from public view: Where is Mr. Qin? Does he have health issues? Is he under   
   investigation?   
      
   Representatives of the Foreign Ministry have struggled to respond when pressed   
   by reporters, repeatedly saying that they had no information to provide. After   
   China replaced him on Tuesday, nearly all references to Mr. Qin were at first   
   scrubbed from the    
   ministry’s website, an unusual and unexplained erasure that only deepened   
   the intrigue. On Thursday, asked by a reporter if China had been transparent   
   about Mr. Qin’s ousting, a spokeswoman lashed out at what she called   
   “malicious hype.”   
      
   For a department tasked with speaking to the outside world, the Chinese   
   Foreign Ministry’s floundering response to the disappearance of one of its   
   own top officials highlights the weakness of China’s diplomatic apparatus   
   under President Xi Jinping.    
   Mr. Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, has concentrated   
   power under himself and enforced secrecy in an already highly opaque system,   
   no matter the cost to China’s international image.   
      
   Mr. Xi has diminished the sway of the Foreign Ministry, analysts say, as   
   he’s pursued an increasingly assertive, and some say risky, foreign policy.   
      
   “The larger foreign ministry’s bureaucracy has been losing its influence   
   over foreign policy for most of the Xi era, with decisions on key issues like   
   Taiwan or the U.S. being made within the Party and dominated by Xi,” said   
   Jude Blanchette, who    
   holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and   
   International Studies in Washington.   
      
   Mr. Xi has presided over China’s worst bilateral relationship with the   
   United States in decades; he has aggressively pressed China’s claim over the   
   self-governed island of Taiwan; and in the face of widespread criticism, he   
   remains committed to    
   supporting Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine.   
      
   Mr. Xi is also thought to be responsible for Mr. Qin’s meteoric rise,   
   allowing him to overtake more experienced diplomats, in being named foreign   
   minister late last year after serving only 17 months as China’s ambassador   
   in Washington.   
      
   “The basic parameters of Beijing’s foreign policy are pretty well fixed,   
   and so a single personnel change, especially Qin Gang’s, won’t adjust this   
   trajectory,” Mr. Blanchette said. “Qin Gang is no Henry Kissinger.”   
      
   In a sign of how bizarre the circumstances surrounding Mr. Qin’s removal   
   are, the foreign minister’s page on the Foreign Ministry’s website only   
   reads: “Information updating …”   
      
   On Friday, however, some mentions of Mr. Qin began reappearing on the Foreign   
   Ministry’s website, including his last reported engagements on June 25, when   
   he held talks with diplomats from Vietnam, Russia and Sri Lanka. But searches   
   for his name    
   continued to turn up no results.   
      
   The erasure, even if only temporary, harkened back to the days of Mao Zedong,   
   when political enemies were expunged from photographs and official documents.   
   It also suggests he has unexpectedly run afoul of the Communist Party   
   leadership and not succumbed    
   to a health issue as had been suggested by the Foreign Ministry earlier this   
   month when asked why he wasn’t attending a meeting of Southeast Asian   
   nations in Indonesia.   
      
   On Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry looked flat-footed again when its   
   spokeswoman, Mao Ning, was unable to provide any answers to at least 20   
   questions about Mr. Qin at a news briefing in Beijing.   
      
   Ms. Mao repeatedly told the reporters to refer to Chinese state media for more   
   information, and briefly chuckled when a reporter appeared flabbergasted by   
   her insistence that the situation was “very clear.”   
      
   An official transcript of the briefing omitted any questions about Mr. Qin,   
   adding to the Orwellian flavor of the controversy.   
      
   “All questions are covered up!” a user of Weibo commented under a video of   
   the news briefing.   
      
   “She can’t say anything as a spokeswoman,” noted another user.   
      
   The fumbling response, in part, reflects how the ministry is charged with   
   explaining and implementing the wide-ranging goals and whims of the party’s   
   leadership without necessarily being granted access to its thinking.   
      
   Sometimes the message from the leadership is clear. The ministry’s adoption   
   in recent years of an aggressive brand of statesmanship known as   
   “wolf-warrior” diplomacy mirrored Mr. Xi’s calls for China to be more   
   assertive on the global stage.   
      
   Other times, Chinese diplomats have had to hedge. Joseph Torigian, an   
   assistant professor at American University in Washington who studies elite   
   politics in China, recounted a story he was told by a party historian: An   
   official at the Foreign Ministry in    
   the 1980s who was asked to analyze whether China should mend ties with the   
   Soviet Union once wrote two reports staking opposite positions because he did   
   not know yet which one China’s leader at the time, Deng Xiaoping, would   
   favor.   
      
   “The whole game is to adhere as closely as possible to what the leader   
   wants,” Mr. Torigian said. “In that sense, the Foreign Ministry has always   
   been an organization that executes policy and not an organization that   
   deliberates policy.”   
      
   Mr. Qin has been replaced by his predecessor, Wang Yi, a senior diplomat who   
   has spent the last few weeks holding meetings with senior foreign officials,   
   including John Kerry, President Biden’s climate change envoy, and Josep   
   Borrell Fontelles, the    
   European Union’s top diplomat.   
      
   As a member of the Politburo, the council of China’s 24 most senior   
   officials, Mr. Wang should have more access to Mr. Xi than previous foreign   
   ministers, though that doesn’t guarantee more influence in policymaking.   
      
   Whether Mr. Wang is just a placeholder also remains to be seen — another   
   question Ms. Mao declined to shed any more light on — but he returns to his   
   former position as China is bidding to play a bigger role in global affairs   
   than ever before, with Mr.   
    Xi at the center of those efforts, rather than Chinese diplomats.   
      
      
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