The Missing Minister, Episode 3:The Downfall

In our final episode, we get a break in the case of the missing minister: According to our sources, Chinese officials were told that Qin disappeared due to an explosive allegation. We dig into that story and its consequences for Fu and for Qin – Xi Jinping’s trusted aide.

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source：The Journal  Podcast

10/18/2024 3:55:00 PM

Kate Linebaugh: This is the third episode of The Missing Minister. If you haven’t already listened to episodes one and two, we recommend doing that first. One day, I got a text from our colleague, Lingling Wei. She’d just connected with a source, and what she’d learned would redirect the course of our reporting. So you met with a source who knows what’s going on with Qin Gang.

Lingling Wei: Yes.

Kate Linebaugh: And is there anything you can tell us about this source?

Lingling Wei: Let me think a little bit. So I can only say the source has knowledge about the party investigation into Qin Gang and what it had turned up.

Kate Linebaugh: For months, we’ve been trying to figure out why Chinese officials seem to take Qin’s affair with Fu Xiaotian so seriously. Now, Lingling’s source was offering an explanation.

Lingling Wei: It was quite unbelievable. It was unbelievable. According to the source, Qin Gang disappeared last year because the Chinese were told that the woman he had affair with, Fu Xiaotian, was a spy.

Kate Linebaugh: A spy. This was an explosive allegation. So Lingling kept reporting, kept talking to people in a position to know about Qin’s investigation, and she kept us in the loop along the way.

Lingling Wei: I do trust this source. I’ve known him for years as well.

Kate Linebaugh: She reached out to sources she’s cultivated in over a decade of reporting on China.

Lingling Wei: I said, listen, I’m working on a very sensitive story. I need to know what you know about this.

Kate Linebaugh: Through that reporting, Lingling was able to confirm what her first source had said. Chinese officials were told that Fu had been a spy for Western Intelligence.

Lingling Wei: Specifically, they were told that Fu was a spy for the British.

Kate Linebaugh: We haven’t been able to confirm whether this allegation is true or false. We asked the British government if Fu was a spy for MI6, the British Foreign Intelligence Agency, and the UK Foreign Office declined to confirm or deny if she was, as is their policy. We also asked the Chinese Foreign Ministry about this, and they had no comment. Fu hasn’t been seen in public in more than a year, and we haven’t been able to reach her. But according to Lingling’s sources, it was this allegation of espionage, true or not, that sparked Qin’s downfall. For Lingling, this was a huge breakthrough, but it also raised another question. Where did this allegation of espionage come from? From The Journal, I’m Kate Linebaugh, and this is The Missing Minister, a three-part investigation into the mysterious disappearance of China’s Foreign Minister. Episode three, The Downfall. According to Lingling’s reporting, Chinese officials were told that Fu Xiaotian had allegedly spied for the British, but her sources also told her something else about where this allegation first came from.

Lingling Wei: Here, the Chinese have to thank their Russian friends.

Kate Linebaugh: Scroll back to June 25th of last year, the last day Qin was seen in public. At the time, a delegation from Moscow was in Beijing led by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko. According to Lingling’s reporting, Chinese officials were told that during that trip.

Lingling Wei: Either Rudenko himself or someone very senior in his entourage tipped off the Chinese. They basically dropped the bombshell. Your foreign minister slept with a British spy.

Kate Linebaugh: We reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry about this alleged tip. They didn’t respond, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry had no comment. We can’t confirm whether the Russians in fact tipped off the Chinese. But according to Lingling’s sources, this is the story that senior Chinese officials were told by their higher-ups to explain Qin’s disappearance. According to her sources, the Chinese viewed the tip as a gesture of friendship. China and Russia have become increasingly close in recent years. They share intelligence and their leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, have common interests.

Lingling Wei: Both see the United States as a big threat to their national interests, and they want to get aligned to counter the United States and its allies. And there’s also a big personal component to this relationship. The two leaders really get along very well. They have developed a ritual of wishing each other happy birthday, and they have met in person more than 40 times.

Kate Linebaugh: The Chinese government hasn’t publicly explained Fu’s disappearance, and it’s possible there’s more to the story than what was shared with high-level Chinese officials. That something else was going on. And remember, we can’t confirm whether the allegation that Fu was a spy is true or false. One person close to Fu made the point that the same attributes that might have made her valuable to Western intelligence, her connections, her ties to the UK, also made her vulnerable to spying accusations. Whatever the truth, according to Lingling’s sources, Qin was brought in for questioning. What did he know about Fu and could he have been a spy himself?

Lingling Wei: The party investigation was not for the faint-hearted for sure. I was told that it was a very grueling process.

Kate Linebaugh: What do you mean by grueling?

Lingling Wei: According to our sources, Qin Gang was being questioned day in and day out, having his entire life examined by the party investigators. He was undergoing all that interrogation in a very confined place, isolated from family and any kind of legal representation. He had to know that his whole career, his whole life was on the line.

Kate Linebaugh: And according to your sources and reporting, is there any sense that Qin Gang was a spy?

Lingling Wei: Qin Gang was certainly investigated for espionage. According to our sources, he insisted he was innocent, and he repeatedly pledged his loyalty to Xi Jinping. But he had affair with someone who allegedly betrayed the country. So by association, that was a very serious offense.

Kate Linebaugh: Did Qin have any suspicions about Fu?

Lingling Wei: So according to our sources, when Chinese party investigators confronted Qin Gang with Fu Xiaotian’s possible MI6 connection, Qin Gang was extremely surprised and devastated.

Kate Linebaugh: Qin suffered a mental breakdown during the investigation, according to Lingling’s sources. And at one point, he was on suicide watch at a Chinese military hospital.

Lingling Wei: Just months before he disappeared, he was still riding very high. He was considered such a rising star in Chinese political system. And all of a sudden, he found himself being investigated for something as serious as espionage, very hard to take.

Kate Linebaugh: Espionage is a serious accusation anywhere. But in today’s China, it’s especially damaging. How concerned is China about foreign espionage right now?

Dennis Wilder: Incredibly concerned. Xi Jinping believes that the black hand of Western intelligence is trying to bring him down.

Kate Linebaugh: That’s Dennis Wilder. Dennis spent 36 years working for the CIA.

Dennis Wilder: I was a military analyst on China. I spent time overseas doing operational things.

Kate Linebaugh: What kind of operational things did you do overseas?

Dennis Wilder: What you would expect a spy to do overseas, spotting, assessing, recruiting of what we call hard targets, the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans.

Kate Linebaugh: In recent years, the Chinese have been increasingly anxious about foreign spies, and Dennis says that anxiety comes straight from the man in charge.

Dennis Wilder: Xi Jinping thinks we’re out to get him personally. He thinks he has to do everything possible to protect himself.

Kate Linebaugh: There’s some history here. A little over a decade ago, China discovered a network of CIA spies working inside its government. Some were high-ranking Chinese officials. What happened there?

Dennis Wilder: I’m afraid that is not a subject that I can talk about.

Kate Linebaugh: Okay.

Dennis Wilder: That remains highly classified.

Kate Linebaugh: Dennis wouldn’t talk about it, but The Wall Street Journal has reported that as many as two dozen CIA assets in China were rounded up, imprisoned, or executed. All of this was happening as Xi was being groomed for power. And as China’s leader, he has been intensely focused on national security. Rooting out spies is part of that. The job lands primarily on China’s main intelligence agency, its Ministry of State Security or MSS.

Dennis Wilder: What we have seen recently is Xi Jinping promoted the head of the MSS in an unusual step to the very important Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. Also, the MSS has become very open about its activities. They offer money and they give a hotline for Chinese if they suspect somebody of spying. So it’s a very aggressive campaign by the Chinese at this point. They’re very assertive. Frankly, in the modern era, I’ve never seen it like this.

Kate Linebaugh: This was the backdrop to Qin’s disappearance and to Fu’s. It’s why the spying accusation against her was so serious.

Lingling Wei: Like, Qin Gang, Fu Xiaotian was also investigated. According to our sources, after the Chinese got this tip, Fu Xiaotian was already back in Beijing, so it was very easy to bring her in for questioning. But we do not know the outcome of that investigation into her. The party generally doesn’t disclose matters as sensitive as espionage.

Kate Linebaugh: Under Chinese law, espionage carries serious consequences. Penalties can range from imprisonment to execution, and often the trials are held in secret. Do we know where she is?

Lingling Wei: No idea. It’s quite a mystery exactly what happened to her.

Kate Linebaugh: What about the baby?

Lingling Wei: We do not know anything about the baby.

Kate Linebaugh: We asked the Chinese Foreign Ministry about the whereabouts of Fu and her baby. They had no comment. Just a few years earlier, Fu had been the toast of Beijing, the center of social events like her book launch, when diplomats had taken to the stage to praise her sophistication and grace.

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Speaker 1: Elegance is not something that catches your eyes, but rather elegance is the ability not to be forgotten.

Kate Linebaugh: But today, Fu seems on her way to being forgotten. In her absence, what we have are rumors, old interviews from her show, some inactive social media accounts, a garden at an English university. In many ways, Fu has been airbrushed away, but that would prove harder to do with Qin. Qin had been the country’s foreign minister, a state counselor. And over a year after his disappearance, there had been little indication of what his future could be. And then this summer, the Chinese Communist Party dropped a hint. That’s next. You worked for the CIA?

Chris Johnson: For 20 years, yes.

Kate Linebaugh: What did you do there?

Chris Johnson: I was the top political analyst on China.

Kate Linebaugh: That’s Chris Johnson, another former CIA official. Chris has been analyzing and observing China for years. Like us, he was captivated by the mystery of Qin Gang’s disappearance. And this summer he thought there might be an opportunity to learn something about Qin’s status.

Chris Johnson: There was something called the Third Plenum of the 20th Central Committee. These are these plenary sessions…

Kate Linebaugh: The Third Plenum, it’s a high-profile Communist party meeting. The kind of event that in past years Qin would’ve been part of. Hundreds of party officials converge on Beijing dressed in black suits and military uniforms. They gather at the Great Hall of the People in a room draped in revolutionary red. The official goal of the meeting is to discuss economic matters.

Chris Johnson: And it was largely focused on economic matters. But if there’s any personnel housekeeping that needs to be done, then oftentimes they will do that as well because the party constitution actually requires them to do it that way if they’re adding or removing members of the Central Committee. And as I like to say, the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t have a lot of rules, but the few that they have, they actually do follow.

Kate Linebaugh: These personnel changes were what China watchers like Chris and reporters like Lingling were looking out for. At the end of the Plenum, the party releases a written recap of the meeting, a communiqué. And when it came out, Lingling scrolled straight down to the personnel section for news.

Lingling Wei: One key change involves our man Qin Gang.

Kate Linebaugh: What happened?

Lingling Wei: So the communiqué that was issued by state media stated that “Comrade Qin Gang’s resignation request was accepted, and Comrade Qin Gang was removed from his position as a member of the Central Committee.”

Kate Linebaugh: In the months after his disappearance, Qin had been stripped of most of his official titles. He was no longer foreign minister and no longer state counselor, but there was one title he’d held onto. He was still a member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Now, the party was announcing he’d been stripped of that final title to. Qin’s high-flying political career was officially over. But crucially.

Chris Johnson: Qin Gang was listed as comrade, Comrade Qin Gang, which tells us that he’s still a party member. And so he would not still be a party member if they had intention to prosecute him. So we had a sense then that he was going to be at least spared that, number one. And then number two, it was equally clear they weren’t going to say another thing about his case. It’s sort of like Comrade Qin Gang has left and we’re moving on.

Kate Linebaugh: But Qin still hasn’t been seen and the party hasn’t explained his absence. Chris says that’s unusual.

Chris Johnson: Almost always, there’s an instinct inside the system to want to show the system is not rotten. There are a few bad apples. And when we find these bad apples, we throw the book at them and they go away. So in other words, his having disappeared for months and months and months with no explanation as to what happened to him, that leaves a sort of running sore, if you want to call it that, that the regime in normal times would explain in some way or the other. And it’s absolutely clear they don’t intend to explain this. And if it was just an extramarital affair, they would. The fact that they’re not doing that explains to us that whatever has happened is of great sensitivity to them and highly embarrassing.

Kate Linebaugh: Qin’s rise to the top of Chinese politics had ended in a spectacular fall. And that failure didn’t just reflect on Qin.

Lingling Wei: Xi Jinping trusted Qin Gang so much. Remember, Qin Gang was picked by the top leader himself before all this went down.

Kate Linebaugh: So it would be egg on the face of Xi Jinping.

Lingling Wei: Exactly. He decides who gets promoted and who gets demoted. He controls the very powerful security apparatus. He decides how to run the world’s second-largest economy. So he’s the one man who makes all those important decisions.

Kate Linebaugh: Xi trusted Qin. Xi made Qin China’s ambassador to the US. He made Qin foreign minister and state counselor. In the end, those decisions backfired. And when they did, Qin, one of the party’s rising stars, disappeared just like so many others in Xi’s China.

Lingling Wei: This practice of secret detention, investigation, torture, execution is a kind of practice that’s been in existence for many decades. But under Xi Jinping, we have heard more prominent figures disappearing.

Kate Linebaugh: Under Xi, the net of disappearances has widened. It’s not just the usual suspects who disappear, the journalists, activists, corrupt politicians. It’s business people, bankers, government advisors, high-level military officials. And in some cases, it’s Xi’s supporters like Qin.

Lingling Wei: People had thought that as long as you are close to Xi Jinping, you’re safe. No matter how many bad things you do, you’re safe. You’re going to be safe. And obviously, Qin Gang’s downfall showed that the fact that I promoted you is not a guarantee for your political safety down the road.

Kate Linebaugh: Lingling doesn’t write off the possibility that Qin could reemerge one day, that he won’t stay missing. Maybe he’ll be granted a low-level government job. There could even be a pension, government healthcare. It would be a small life, nothing like the one he had before when he was an actor on the world stage. But whether that happens, whether Qin ever gets to exist again, whether Fu and her baby ever reappear, it’ll likely be at the discretion of one man, Xi Jinping. The Missing Minister is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.