Something is amiss in China’s foreign-affairs leadership

CHINA’S DIPLOMATS are working hard. On August 31st more than 20 world leaders will join President Xi Jinping in the northern city of Tianjin for a two-day meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a security forum. Among them will be Russia’s Vladimir Putin (a frequent visitor), India’s Narendra Modi (a rare one) and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who seldom goes abroad. In recent days Donald Trump said he would visit China “probably during this year or shortly thereafter”. It would be the first such trip by an American president since 2017, when Mr Trump was last there. Great-power relations are in flux.

Oddly, however, one of China’s most senior foreign-affairs officials, Liu Jianchao, is nowhere to be seen. Mr Liu heads the Communist Party’s International Department and, at least until recently, had been widely tipped as the next foreign minister. The department’s website still names Mr Liu as the organisation’s chief. But it does not list any of his activities since July 30th, when he visited a senior politician in Algiers (the department’s job is to build ties with foreign political parties). That is unusual. He had more than 30 meetings in August 2024, the website shows. For him, it was a typically busy month.

Mr Liu’s disappearance was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on August 10th. The newspaper said he had been detained for questioning. Reuters news agency also said he had been taken away, quoting “five people familiar with the matter”. Both reports stated that the reason was unknown. Reuters later said that one of Mr Liu’s deputies, Sun Haiyan, had also been questioned. Ms Sun reappeared at an event on August 15th and has since had other meetings with foreigners, suggesting her troubles, if any, are not as great as her boss’s.

If Mr Liu fails to re-emerge, it would mark another purge at the top of China’s foreign-policy establishment following the disappearance of China’s then foreign minister, Qin Gang, in June 2023. He was replaced the following month by his predecessor, Wang Yi. Officials have still not explained why, though rumours abound about his private life. Last year Mr Qin was also removed from the party’s Central Committee.

Western officials would not cheer Mr Liu’s downfall. A fluent English-speaker who studied at Oxford University, he avoided the aggressive “wolf-warrior” style of diplomacy once voguish among Chinese diplomats (it has receded in the past couple of years). “It is unimaginable that China and the United States would engage in armed conflict,” he said, days before he disappeared. An ability to charm foreigners, however, will not impress the party’s investigators. ■