Chinese foreign policy vis-à-vis the United States is likely to turn increasingly frigid under Wang Yi, who returned to replace Qin Gang this week as Chinese foreign minister after Qin’s mysterious month-long absence, a well-informed source told Asia Sentinel.
Wang, who held the post before being replaced by Qin, previously a fast-rising figure in President Xi Jinping’s government, has a reputation as a hardline “wolf warrior” against the West, the source said. Qin’s dismissal, complicated by rumors of an affair, is believed to be largely due to an internal power struggle between factions of the foreign ministry divided over policy toward the West, an uncharacteristic display of disarray at the top of the government.
On July 25, the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s parliament, removed Qin and replaced him with Wang as the new foreign minister, the NPC announced on the same day. Qin had been foreign minister for less than seven months. On July 28, Wang’s Chinese profile as foreign minister appeared on the foreign ministry’s website for the first time since Qin’s removal, and Wang’s English profile appeared on the ministry’s website on June 29. Qin’s profile as foreign minister has been deleted from the foreign ministry’s website.
“Qin Gang’s abrupt exit from such a steep upward trajectory is highly unusual in any system, including China,” said Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai Center for China of Yale Law School and former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman, in his blog on July 27. “At a meeting with China’s new premier, Li Qiang, that I attended in Beijing in late March as part of the China Development Forum, Qin was seated prominently next to Premier Li. He was the only other senior official in that capacity. I and others present at this meeting took this as an important signal of Qin’s key role in the government’s push to reconnect with the foreign business community as part of China’s new efforts at ‘higher level reform and opening up.’”
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