XI JINPING PURGES RANKS TO REVITALIZE LEADERSHIP

The Foreign Ministry website now lists Wang as head diplomat after he was recalled to the post he held from 2013-22.

Corruption is very much part of the engrained culture of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as recent high-profile disappearances from the ranks of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and government have made clear. Although Chairman Xi Jinping has not given any explanation, the replacement of the top two generals of the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) and the disappearance of Foreign Minister Qin Gang follow a well-worn pattern of corruption charges in China.

Qin’s last public appearance was on June 25, and Xi officially removed him from office by a decree signed on July 25. Qin, a Xi loyalist and rising star who previously served as ambassador to the USA, is rumoured to have had a romantic affair and love child with Phoenix TV presenter Fu Xiaotian, who has also disappeared. The married Qin had only taken up the foreign ministerial post in December 2022. The Foreign Ministry website now lists Wang as head diplomat after he was recalled to the post he held from 2013–22. With just 207 days in office, “wolf warrior” Qin was China’s shortest-serving foreign minister.

Chinese people are just as interested in Qin’s fate as the rest of the world, as searches for “Qin Gang” on the Baidu search engine exploded 5,000 percent in just one week in mid-July! Perhaps of greater concern than Qin’s fate is massive upheaval within the PLARF, a force responsible for China’s nuclear-missile arsenal. In the most serious purge of the PLA in a decade, its commander, General Li Yuchao, and political commissar, General Liu Guangbin, were removed from their posts after being absent from public view for several months.

Eyebrows were raised when General Li was anomalously absent from a promotion ceremony chaired by Xi in late June.