U.S. officials say Mr. Qin’s rapid rise within the Foreign Ministry has sparked widespread resentment among his colleagues. He was seen as a pet by Chinese President Xi Jinping, for whom he was chief of protocols, which angered his colleagues and caused him to have a falling out with his predecessor, Wang Yi, who now oversees all foreign policy. This led to what some called a “blood feud.” . But that resentment also doesn’t explain his catastrophic fall.
The most interesting theories include speculation that Fu was a foreign intelligence agent and that her spies endangered Qin. One American diplomat told me he had heard that Qin was a Russian agent. “No,” said a former U.S. official with many years of dealings with Beijing, adding that Chinese authorities believe Mr. Hu had been working as a British agent for more than a decade. The spy story is interesting, but I couldn’t confirm it.
We are left with a mystery that highlights how opaque China’s one-party state is and how difficult it will be for the CIA, perhaps the world’s best intelligence agency, to penetrate its walls of secrecy. “We have investigated extensively what happened to Mr. Qin, but the picture has been airbrushed out, just like in the Stalin era of the Soviet Union, and it’s as if he has disappeared,” said the Biden administration, which closely follows China. a senior official said. .
Asked about Qin’s disappearance and rumors of espionage, a Chinese embassy spokesperson said: “We have no relevant information to provide.” A CIA spokesperson also declined to comment. So did a spokesperson for the British Foreign Office in London.
Mr. Hata disappeared from public view on June 25, and was officially dismissed a month later. Interestingly, on the day he disappeared, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko was in Beijing for high-level talks.
Did Rudenko bring evidence that Qin was compromised? This is the version told by a former US official. He said Russia’s Federal Security Service had previously warned China’s Ministry of State Security that Mr. Hu was an employee of the British Secret Intelligence Service. But the security ministry was reluctant to oppose the foreign minister without “robust” evidence, a former US official explained.
For months, reports have speculated that Ms. Hu may have been a spy, with some suggesting that the British may have scouted her. The Biden administration heard these rumors and put pressure on both the CIA and Britain without any confirmation, senior administration officials said.
Whatever the trigger, Mr. Qin, 57, was arrested and investigated shortly after his disappearance in June, a senior government official said. The version told by former US officials is that the foreign minister was unaware of his lover’s ties to the intelligence services and attempted suicide after being confronted with the information. According to this account, Mr. Qin was admitted to a special facility for Chinese military and political officials known as “301 Hospital.” There is no independent confirmation of that.
Mr. Fu, 40, also disappeared, and it is almost certain that he has been arrested and imprisoned. Like Qin, she also had a meteoric rise through the ranks, making her the star host of state-run Phoenix Television’s “Talk with World Leaders” show, which she was removed from in 2022. That year, Fu’s son, El Kin, was born to her surrogate mother. In the US.
According to the Financial Times, Qin and Hu’s ill-fated relationship began in the UK around 2010, when the two were working there. Born in Chongqing, Hu earned a master’s degree from Churchill University in Cambridge in 2007 and joined media company Phoenix. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ official biography, Mr. Qin worked in London as a junior diplomat from 1995 to 1999, and was posted to London for a second time as minister and counselor from 2010 to 2011. That’s probably when I met Fu.
Qin quickly rose to prominence after returning to Beijing in 2011 after working in London for the second time, serving as Foreign Ministry spokesperson for three years, and then as the ministry’s protocol director until 2017, in charge of planning President Xi’s visit. In that role, he developed close ties with China’s president, current and former officials said.
This warm relationship was supported by Mr. Qin’s wife, Lin Yan, who became friendly with Mr. Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan. According to a government official, Mr. Qin’s wife made mooncakes for Mr. Xi’s wife as if she were a member of her family. Mr. Qin’s closeness to the Xi family likely enabled him to jump the normal promotion ladder in China and become foreign minister at a relatively young age. This rapid rise sparked resentment among colleagues at the department.
“Mr. Qin’s persistent stance toward Mr. Xi was an affront to the strict hierarchical relationship established by Foreign Ministry founder Zhou Enlai,” said the former CIA senior China analyst, now with the China Strategy Group, a political risk consulting firm. Christopher K. Johnson, director of “The resulting spat left Chinese diplomats divided and distracted as Mr. Xi pushed for the Communist Party to usurp the ministry’s role in shaping foreign policy.”
As Qin rose to power, her alleged relationship with Fu would become a problem for foreign intelligence agencies that had contact with her. Espionage likes to have agents in good places, but not in prominent places that would cause a flap. The dangers of recruiting agents who eventually rise to high positions were described to me decades ago by one of her CIA associates as “the prime minister’s problem.” But again, there is no evidence that this was a problem for Qin.
After Qin returned to China in early 2023 and became foreign minister, Hu’s position became awkward. She began posting references to the baby on Chinese and Western social media. She described her baby as her “precious baby son Elkin” in a post on Twitter last April, when she flew home from the United States to China for the final time. According to the Financial Times, she posted last month that her baby’s father was not American, and around the time of her baby’s birthday on March 19, she told an anonymous father about her He reportedly posted a birthday greeting.
The eternal mystery of this story is the coincidence that a senior Russian diplomat visited Beijing on the very day that China’s foreign minister disappeared. Whatever information Rudenko brought to the table, his deeper mission was likely to remind Xi Jinping of Russia’s staying power. The previous day, rebel mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin marched his private army into Moscow, briefly shaking the Kremlin. Mr. Prigozhin’s rebellion was crushed and he died in a mysterious plane crash two months later, but Mr. Putin would have been quick to remind Mr. Xi that he was in charge.
The important thing for me is that Russia is not the hapless junior partner that sometimes appears in relations with the Chinese government. Xi’s China may be growing in wealth and power, but Putin remains a master of intelligence and political manipulation. “Putin is the case officer,” a senior administration official said.
The fall of the foreign minister and TV star finally reminds us that even in a strict one-party state like China, political activity can be directed at the very human weaknesses of individuals. Ta. It is also a warning of how difficult it is to penetrate the curtain of secrecy surrounding China’s leadership.