Beijing asks India to stop targeting Chinese companies. Germany’s new China strategy disappoints many, but business leaders welcome it. Rumours about the missing Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang circulate on social media. A UK parliamentary committee report called its government’s China strategy ‘inadequate‘. Chinascope looks at the rumours about Qin’s disappearance – and much more.
China over the week
Rumours about China’s foreign minister Qin, who has been missing, have fueled intense speculations – including an alleged extramarital affair with a journalist.
Officially, China has explained Qin’s disappearance as a health-related matter. But no pictures of him recovering from alleged illness or undergoing treatment have emerged, which has fuelled rumours. Qin was supposed to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Jakarta but instead, the foreign ministry announced that Director of Foreign Affairs Commission Wang Yi would fill his shoes.
Qin’s last public appearance was during a meeting with Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Rudenko Andrey Yurevich on 25 June.
Qin, as per the rumour mill, had an affair with a TV show host named Fu Xiaotian affiliated with Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV. And that he had a child out of wedlock with Fu, who is a US citizen.
There is a lack of clarity about who Fu’s husband is, which has added to the speculation about Qin being her child’s father.
Overseas Chinese media, including Mandarin language media based in Taiwan, have also intensely speculated about Qin’s alleged affair. They shared videos of Fu’s interview with Qin wherein they appear to be smiling while looking away at the horizon. Fu’s last tweet is seen as another piece of evidence. She posted three photos, including one where she is interviewing Qin. She hasn’t tweeted or posted on Weibo since 11 April.
If the rumours about Qin’s affair are true, Chinese President Xi Jinping has a difficult task ahead of him. Xi promoted Qin to the role of foreign minister over other senior diplomats because of their shared ties. Infidelity rumours would be challenging to hush away as Xi has made it a point to promote cadres with a good track record. Qin’s example would poke a hole in that façade.
The other possibility is that both rumours about Qin’s ill health and the affair are true, which means Xi could slowly use the former to sideline one of his close confidants. Alternatively, all rumours are a bit of fluff, and Qin is not keeping well.
We will know about his fate in the coming weeks.
Interestingly, the Ministry of Public Security of China has launched a new campaign to inform the public about misinformation and build a solid ‘national security barrier’.
“Persist in building a solid national network security barrier, persist in giving play to the driving and leading role of informatization, persist in managing the network according to the law,” said Xi during a two-day meeting on cybersecurity.
Since Qin was missing from action, India’s Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar met with Wang Yi on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting in Jakarta.
During the meeting, Wang said India should meet ‘China halfway’ on the border issue, a well-honed Chinese talking point.
“Both sides should be mutually supportive and fulfilling, not mutually consuming and be suspicious of each other,” Wang told Jaishankar.
But a new topic was also addressed between Wang and Jaishankar.
The Chinese official raised concerns about ‘India’s recent restrictive measures against Chinese companies’ alluding to some recent actions against Xiaomi and others.
Xiaomi is facing charges of Foreign Exchange Management Act 1999 (FEMA) violations triggered by alleged funds transfer from India to Europe.
New Delhi’s targeted campaign against Chinese companies operating in India is starting to resemble what the US has been doing for the past three years. The actions against Chinese companies are Beijing’s own making.
Also read: China’s new foreign affairs law says it will target India if relations go worse
China in world news
A group of Chinese hackers managed to breach the internal Microsoft Office 365 email accounts of US State Departments and the US Department of Commerce.
The hackers were able to read emails of US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, who is set to travel to China by the end of the summer. Raimondo was the only Cabinet-level official whose email was accessed by the hackers.
China’s negotiating tactic includes keeping the opposing party off-balance. The crisis that emerges before the US officials visit Beijing is usually manufactured to gain the upper hand in a negotiation—the latest hacking incident would be part of such a strategy.
Germany released its much-anticipated China strategy document on Thursday. Berlin had been working on it for a year now.
The thrust of Germany’s policy has been fixated on the term ‘de-risking’, which was mentioned directly five times in the 64-page document released. Other phrases littered across the document were ‘diversifying supply chains’ and ‘reducing dependence’. But the strategy clarified that decoupling is not on the cards. “However, we are not pursuing a decoupling of our economies,” said the ‘Strategy on China’ document.
The document managed to disappoint both China hawks, who were expecting a tough stance leaning towards decoupling, and the Chinese.
“Forcibly ‘de-risking’ based on ideological prejudice and competition anxiety will only be counterproductive and artificially intensify risks,” said the Chinese embassy in response.
China Daily called the strategy laid out in the report ‘protectionist’.
But German business associations have welcomed the de-risking strategy as they don’t have to pull the plug and decouple from China.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament has released a report, calling their government’s strategy to deal with China inadequate. The report has been in the making since 2019.
“The level of resources dedicated to tackling the threat posed by China’s ‘whole-of-state’ approach has been completely inadequate. While a shortage of resources had been identified as early as 2012, effort was diverted onto the acute counter-terrorism threat arising from Syria,” said the report.
The divergence in views at the Whitehall on tackling the China challenge is pretty evident as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary James Cleverly have made contradicting statements about their views on China.
India is yet to make similar efforts to lay out its China strategy.
Also read: China happy to let citizens believe US treasury secretary came ‘begging’
Must read this week
The Upside of U.S.-Chinese Competition – Kai He
People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force Order of Battle 2023 (report) – Decker Eveleth
The author is a columnist and a freelance journalist. He was previously a China media journalist at the BBC World Service. He is currently a MOFA Taiwan Fellow based in Taipei and tweets @aadilbrar. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)