He was absent from a meeting of foreign ministers in Jakarta last week at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The foreign ministry said at the time that health reasons caused the absence.
cited unspecified health reasons for Mr. Qin’s original disappearance, and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Monday that she had no information on when Mr. Qin, 57, might return to his office, the Financial Times reported. Chinese diplomatic activities were proceeding normally, she said.
U.S. government sources said the matter is being closely watched as Mr. Qin was regarded as a key player in recent efforts to ease bilateral tensions and renew high-level official contacts withMr. Qin was appointed foreign minister in December after a brief stint as ambassador to the United States, regarded as a plum posting for any Chinese diplomat.
Another story appeared on Chinese social media sites saying Mr. Qin ran afoul of Chinese Communist Party authorities for an affair with a reporter from the People’s Liberation Army-linked outlet Phoenix Television and possibly sired a child out of wedlock. “We don’t really know what’s happening,” the U.S. senior official said. “We know a little bit about it.”The U.S. government official said the disappearance is unusual because Mr. Qin is known to be close to Mr.His meteoric rise created some bureaucratic enemies within the foreign ministry.
“And then he was rewarded, much to the chagrin of the foreign ministry, with the ambassador job in Washington, and then from there, he has just rocketed,” the official said.His predecessor, Wang Yi, held the post from 2013 until December. “So, he’s obviously out of sight. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know if he’s going to be removed,” the senior official said. “The Chinese system is often quiet for a period and then he just comes back and there’s no sense one way or the other.”Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post. Journalist Phil Cunningham said in a tweet Monday that five sentences about the missing foreign minister were cut without notice from an article he wrote for the paper.
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