Qin Gang, China’s vice foreign minister and a veteran “wolf warrior” diplomat, is expected to replace China’s longest-serving ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, who released a farewell letter on June 21.
“I have worked in the United States for over eight years, and will leave the position and go back to China soon,” the 68-year-old Cui wrote in his letter, which was published on the embassy’s website.
China’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy is an assertive and often abrasive diplomatic style that the Beijing regime adopted in recent years, and Qin, 55, is well known for the aggressive approach. He’s famous for his sharp retorts to criticism of China while he was the spokesman of China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry from 2005 to 2010, as well as when he served in the position again from 2011 to 2014.
After being promoted to a higher position, Qin kept his “wolf warrior” tone. For example, when Qin answered a German journalist’s question about China’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy at a press briefing in Beijing on Feb. 9, he said that other countries and people who “baselessly smeared China” are “evil wolves.”
New Ambassador
The Chinese regime didn’t announce who their next ambassador to the United States will be after Cui released his farewell letter, but since April, overseas media have reported that Qin would be his successor.On June 22, Reuters cited sources saying that Qin was set to be named China’s ambassador to the United States, while on April 26, the Diplomat reported, without mentioning a source, that Qin would lead Beijing’s diplomatic efforts in Washington.
On April 20, The Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing planned to appoint Qin as the top envoy to Washington, citing regime officials.
Qin’s Resumé
Qin has served as China’s vice foreign minister, mainly in charge of protocol and news, since 2018, according to his official resumé, which was released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).Before taking that leading role, Qin was director of the MFA’s protocol department from 2014.
As the MFA’s protocol officer, Qin has accompanied Chinese leader Xi Jinping on numerous overseas visits since 2014. His main tasks during these trips were to oversee schedules and itineraries, as well as making sure the trips followed diplomatic scripts.
From 2002 to 2014, a stint as counselor in the embassy to the UK was followed by him serving as MFA spokesman in Beijing, then minister in London, and then back to Beijing as spokesman.
Qin joined MFA in 1988 as a Chinese-language secretary in the ministry’s Beijing Service Bureau for Diplomatic Missions and has been working for MFA since then.
U.S.–China Relations
The United States and China are the world’s largest and second-largest economies. The relations between these two superpowers are at their lowest point in recent years.After the trade dispute in 2018, U.S.–China relations rapidly worsened. That dispute was followed by tit-for-tat closures of consulates, and restrictions on journalists and visas. Recently, the Beijing regime has shown its ambition to replace the United States as the world’s superpower and to make the yuan the world’s dominant currency, displacing the dollar.
“Currently, the China–U.S. relations are at a critical crossroads. The U.S. is restructuring its China policy in a new round, and facing the choice between dialogue and cooperation, or confrontation and conflict,” Cui concluded in his farewell letter.
Now, the investigation of the origins of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, provides a new conflict between the two countries. The United States has ordered an investigation, which China opposes.
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