They also warned that Beijing’s inability to shed the secrecy surrounding his disappearance has also raised many questions about China’s opaque decision-making.
Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre in Washington, said Beijing’s terse explanation is unconvincing.
“It appears that Beijing’s message is becoming more focused – that Qin has health issues,” she said. “Few believe it, but for China having an explanation that sticks and that it can stick to is important.”
Qin was last seen in public when he met senior diplomats from Russia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka on June 25, according to the Foreign Ministry.
The cancellation without further explanation was a major “surprise if not embarrassment” to the Europeans, according to Philippe Le Corre, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis.
On July 7, the foreign ministry was asked for the first time if health reasons were behind the cancellation, but its spokesman Wang Wenbin said he had “not heard about that”.
But just four days later, Wang said Qin would miss the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in the Indonesian capital Jakarta because of “health reasons”, without elaborating.
Rumours about what happened to Qin went into overdrive over the past weeks on domestic and foreign social media.
When pressed about Qin’s mysterious disappearance on Monday, a different foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning said she had “no information”.
Foreign policy chief Wang Yi has stood in for Qin at major events even though he outranks him. Photo: EPA-EFE
Sari Arho Havrén, an associate fellow at Royal United Services Institute in London, said Qin’s case was a telling example of how the system operates.
“This is a guessing game. The Communist Party is far from being transparent and typically does not release information in this kind of situation, and although he has been missing for three weeks, which is a long time, we can only speculate,” she said.
“When it comes to China’s reputation and diplomacy, the case is considered an internal party affair, and I don’t think the Chinese authorities are really concerned about how this radiates, or looks, to the outside.”
Sun also said the saga cast “much uncertainty and confusion over the consistency, stability and credibility of Beijing’s decision-making”.
“If a vice-national level leader can just disappear without much of an explanation, people find it difficult to trust and count on any Chinese leader or official and their positions,” she said.
Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, said Beijing’s failure to deny those rumours or clarify Qin’s status was “an ominous sign” for his career and the country’s image.
He said this situation was not unprecedented, citing a mysterious two-week absence by Xi shortly before his ascent to the top party role in 2012, adding: “It is another example of China’s obsession with secrecy.
“It is likely that the outside world may never know what actually happened to Qin if the Chinese authorities choose not to give an explanation for his absence, even if China’s image is at stake.”
But Wu said some rumours about the foreign minister’s health and whereabouts had been allowed to circulate on the country’s tightly controlled internet, in contrast to Joe Biden’s recent comments calling Xi a “dictator” which were totally off limits.
He suggested that Qin’s absence and Beijing’s handling of it suggested China was becoming more authoritarian and “would doubtless add more uncertainty to China’s one-man politics, making it harder to ascertain and predict for foreign governments and investors”.
