After ousting Qin Gang, China erases him & evades questions

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, saying they had no information to provide. After China replaced him on Tuesday, nearly all references to Qin were scrubbed from the ministry’s website, an unusual erasure that has only deepened the intrigue. On Thursday, asked by a reporter if China had been transparent about 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. Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, has concentrated power under himself and enforced secrecy in an already highly opaque system. Xi has diminished the sway of the foreign ministry, analysts say, as he’s pursued an increasingly assertive, and some say risky, foreign policy.
In a sign of how bizarre the circumstances surrounding Qin’s removal are, the foreign minister’s page on the foreign ministry’s website only reads: “Information updating …” Searches with his name turn up no results, as if he never existed within the bureaucracy. That means no references to his past meetings with his foreign counterparts, his speeches and official visits overseas. The erasure harkened back to the days of Mao Zedong, when political enemies were expunged from photos and official documents.