“Whoever is in charge of the Taiwan Affairs Office, probably, will have a very limited impact on how the policy is made,” said Fei-Ling Wang, an international affairs professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. “Because, after all, this person usually is many people away from the top leader. He basically carries out orders.”

Liang Shuyuan, an assistant research fellow at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, a government-funded think tank in Taipei, said Xi would not let the Taiwan issue out of his hands when the US was shoring up alliances in the region.

In a white paper published on August 10, Liu’s office doubled down on Beijing’s resolve to take control of the self-ruled island through peaceful unification but also said it would not rule out using force.

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Beijing sees Taiwan as a province that is part of the People’s Republic of China. Most countries do not recognise Taiwan as a sovereign country, but some, such as the US and Britain, only acknowledge Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China rather than affirming it.

The white paper did not mention Beijing’s promises to allow Taiwan to maintain a military and not send bureaucrats to the island, unlike previous papers from 1993 and 2000.

Liang said the PLA’s military exercises around Taiwan only solidified the idea that the cross-straits issue played a central role in Sino-US relations.

“The PLA’s deployment during the drills showed it wanted to add pressure on Taiwan, but it also clearly demonstrated its intent to counter US interference militarily or politically,” she said.

By the time the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference hold their annual meetings in March, Liu will be 65, the normal retirement age for civil servants of ministerial rank. Unless he is promoted, potentially to succeed Wang Yi as foreign minister and state councillor, Liu would have to retire.

But finding a suitable replacement could be difficult, with analysts saying few potential candidates ticked all the right boxes.

Liu, China’s envoy to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017, joined the foreign service in 1981 after graduating from Beijing Foreign Languages Institute.

He rose through the ranks in the foreign ministry’s international organisations and conferences department, and was then put in charge of other areas, including relations with the US and arms control, before being made an assistant foreign minister in 2007.

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Two years later, Liu was appointed deputy director of the party’s international department, which reaches out to political parties in other countries. It was the first time Liu had taken up a senior party position.

Under Xi, Liu was appointed China’s permanent representative to the UN for four years before returning to Beijing as Taiwan Affairs Office deputy director and being promoted to director less than a year later.

“He was kind of known for his spontaneity and can take some jokes,” Fei-Ling Wang said.

Predicting political reshuffles in China is difficult, but norms – by no means hard rules – can be derived by analysing previous appointees’ political experience, age, rank and closeness to Xi.

Xi, looking to secure a third term as party leader at this year’s congress, has shown a preference for appointing trusted cadres with whom he has worked.

Liu’s predecessor as Taiwan Affairs Office director, Zhang Zhijun, also had experience in the party’s international department and the foreign ministry before his appointment, and they both held the rank of vice-minister.

03:09

US President Joe Biden says US military will defend Taiwan if attacked

US President Joe Biden says US military will defend Taiwan if attacked

Liang said that since the Trump administration in the US, the Taiwan issue “has been embedded in the framework of US-China relations and has even become a reason for unstable US-China ties”.

That instability and bilateral competition meant Xi would need to promote an official of vice-ministerial rank experienced in dealing with the US, she said.

Possible candidates included vice-ministers of foreign affairs Xie Feng and Ma Zhaoxu, both 58.

Xie is the more junior of the two, having been made a vice-minister just last year. But unlike Ma, who has held that rank for three years, he is in charge of managing Sino-US ties and has a wealth of US experience.

From 1993 to 2000, Xie worked on the foreign ministry’s US desk, ending his stint as its chief. He was posted to the Chinese embassy in Washington twice in the 2000s and then went on to become ambassador to Indonesia in 2014 before heading the foreign ministry’s office in Hong Kong from 2017 to 2021.

Liang said Xie had gained experience in explaining the party’s policies to the West during the anti-government protests that rocked Hong Kong. “So you can say he is an America hand, but he also has that – in Chinese Communist Party language – experience struggling against the US,” she said.

Xie’s recent promotion to vice-minister showed Xi was satisfied with his performance, she said, while Ma had focused on Europe, international conferences and arms control, making him a less ideal candidate.

“Sometimes when Xi wants to appoint somebody, he would want you to have certain experience,” she said. “For example, before making you minister, he might first make you take up a fringe vice-ministerial posting to speed up your promotion.”

That would allow the ascension to comply with promotion rules and not look so abrupt.

But Bo Zhiyue, an expert on Chinese elite politics who runs a consultancy in Wellington, New Zealand, said Xie was still too junior to take on the role and Ma’s seniority in the foreign ministry hierarchy would give him the edge if he missed out on succeeding Wang Yi as foreign minister.

Guo Yezhou, 56, deputy head of the party’s international department since 2014, could be another candidate.

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Bo said 58-year-old Chen Yuanfeng, the younger of the two Taiwan Affairs Office deputy directors before the recent appointment of a third, could also stand a chance.

Chen has been in his current post since 2009 and has not worked outside the Taiwan Affairs Office save for government positions in Heilongjiang, his home province. If he was appointed, it would be a break from the tradition of not promoting Taiwan hands.

“If you want to find an ideal candidate, you’ll want to have someone who’s worked in both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the international department, and possibly in Fujian province as well,” Bo said, referring to the province nearest to Taiwan, where Xi spent 17 of his formative political years.

“But you don’t have such a person with that seniority in rank or the experience. So it’s very, very hard to find anyone.”

Fei-Ling Wang also cautioned against predicting appointments based on an official’s experience.

“I think a political decision probably is more important than a professional decision,” he said. The party might consider the optics of placing an official in the post but also whether they were trusted by party leaders.

“It’s not based on a guy being a Taiwan expert, or someone who has some great ideas on handling Taiwan or has special connections with [Taiwan leader] Tsai Ing-wen or whomever.”

Analysts agreed the party was facing a lack of younger cadres able to take up senior roles.

“If you look at the whole foreign affairs system, basically everybody’s old, according to this age limit,” Bo said.

“I think the party’s facing this HR crisis, because – of course, there are a lot of young people out there – they’re young and talented but they are not being promoted.

“You cannot promote them en masse right away, because they don’t have the step-by-step experience of promotions in the past.”