Exclusive | China’s new envoy Qin Gang goes to Washington after Sherman talks
- Qin is a trusted aide to the president, speaks fluent English and is frank in his defence of Beijing
- He takes over from Cui Tiankai, who spent eight years in the job during a difficult time for bilateral ties
Qin, currently foreign vice-minister, will leave for the US on Tuesday afternoon from Shanghai, where he has spent the past several days meeting American business executives, a source familiar with the situation said. They included representatives from the American Chamber of Commerce, Disney, Honeywell and Johnson & Johnson. Qin also met Chinese scholars of Sino-US relations. Before travelling to Shanghai he met Universal Studios executives in Beijing, the source added.
Qin, 55, was born in Tianjin and is known as a trusted aide to Xi, accompanying him on foreign trips. He worked his way up the foreign ministry’s ranks after joining as a junior aide in 1992, then serving as a diplomat in Britain and in increasingly senior roles in the ministry’s information department. In 2018, he was promoted to vice-minister of foreign affairs. Qin is the youngest of the sitting vice-ministers in the department.
Those who have been in the room with Qin say he is fluent in English and relatively frank in his defence of Beijing’s positions. In February, he said at a press briefing on the China-CEEC (Central and Eastern European Countries) summit that countries and individuals that smeared China were nothing less than “evil wolves”.
Cui Tiankai: from a Heilongjiang farm to China’s ambassador in Washington
But his diplomatic efforts have also previously been lost in translation. In May, during an event with the European Union’s ambassador in Beijing, Nicolas Chapuis, there were questions about an off-script comment Qin made praising Chapuis for delivering his remarks in English and then translating them into Mandarin himself.
“Everyone saw that ambassador Chapuis fulfilled three roles, as one person,” Qin joked at the time. “He was the speaker, interpreter and the host, which is quite cost-saving.”
