China scrubs ex-Minister Qin Gang’s past in hint of purge

Foreign Ministry declines to provide any information about the reasons behind Qin’s removal; spokesperson says she has no additional details other than what Xinhua has published

A day on after the unprecedented removal of Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang from his post after an unexplained 30-day public absence and only seven months into his stint, the Foreign Ministry scrubbed all information about the Minister from its website.

Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning in a daily briefing in Beijing declined to provide any information about the reasons behind Mr. Qin’s removal. The Foreign Ministry last month said the former Minister missed attending meetings in Jakarta because of health reasons.

Since then, however, the Ministry has made no mention of Mr. Qin’s health, and within hours of his removal, the official website overnight deleted all past engagements and speeches of Mr. Qin from its online records, a complete scrubbing of the kind usually reserved only for disgraced officials.

“The MFA site deletions would seem to discount continued speculation among some experts on Tuesday that Qin Gang’s absence and now removal might still be due to serious health issues. Even if health issues had necessitated Mr. Qin’s removal as Foreign Minister, there is no reason this would lead to the deletion of the past record of his meetings within the MFA site,” noted the China Media Project, which tracks Chinese media and politics.

The Ministry’s daily briefing shed no light on the still murky political developments, with spokesperson Mao Ning repeatedly pointing reporters to the brief one-line announcement of Mr. Qin’s removal from Tuesday evening released by the official Xinhua news agency.

“Xinhua has already published information. You can refer to that,” Ms. Mao said to one question. She added that she had “no additional information” in response to several other questions, but stressed that China’s “diplomatic activities are all advancing steadily”.

While there were more than a dozen questions about the still missing Foreign Minister at the briefing, the official transcript released later on Wednesday evening had removed all questions relating to Mr. Qin from the record.