The Journal. - The Missing Minister, Episode 3: The Downfall

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

In our final episode, we get a break in the case of the missing minister: According to our sources, Chinese officials were told that Qin disappeared due to an explosive allegation. We dig into that story and its consequences for Fu and for Qin – Xi Jinping’s trusted aide.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the third episode of The Missing Minister. If you haven't already listened to episodes one and two, we recommend doing that first. One day, I got a text from our colleague Ling Ling Wei. She'd just connected with a source, and what she'd learned would redirect the course of our reporting. So you met with a source who knows what's going on with Chingang. Yes.

And is there anything you can tell us about this source? Let me think a little bit. So I can only say, you know, the source has knowledge about the party investigation into Qinggang and what it had turned up. For months, we've been trying to figure out why Chinese officials seem to take Qin's affair with Fu Xiaotian so seriously. Now Lingling's source was offering an explanation. It was quite unbelievable.

It was unbelievable. According to the source, Qin Gang disappeared last year because the Chinese were told that the woman he had affair with, Fu Xiaotian, was a spy. A spy. This was an explosive allegation. So Lingling kept reporting, kept talking to people in a position to know about Chin's investigation. And she kept us in the loop along the way.

I do trust the source. I've known him for years as well. She reached out to sources she's cultivated in over a decade of reporting on China. I said, listen, I'm working on a very sensitive story. I need to know what you know about this. Through that reporting, Lingling was able to confirm what her first source had said. Chinese officials were told that Fu had been a spy for Western intelligence. Specifically, they were told that Fu was a spy for the British.

We haven't been able to confirm whether this allegation is true or false. We asked the British government if Fu was a spy for MI6, the British Foreign Intelligence Agency, and the UK Foreign Office declined to confirm or deny if she was, as is their policy. We also asked the Chinese Foreign Ministry about this, and they had no comment. Fu hasn't been seen in public in more than a year, and we haven't been able to reach her.

But according to Lingling's sources, it was this allegation of espionage, true or not, that sparked Qin's downfall. For Lingling, this was a huge breakthrough. But it also raised another question. Where did this allegation of espionage come from? From the Journal, I'm Kate Leimbach, and this is The Missing Minister, a three-part investigation into the mysterious disappearance of China's foreign minister.

Episode 3, The Downfall. and even deadly. Eyes forward, don't drive distracted. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. According to Lingling's reporting, Chinese officials were told that Fu Xiaotian had allegedly spied for the British. But her sources also told her something else about where this allegation first came from. Here, the Chinese have to thank their Russian friends. Scroll back to June 25th of last year, the last day Chin was seen in public. At the time, a delegation from Moscow was in Beijing, led by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko.

According to Lingling's reporting, Chinese officials were told that during that trip, either Rudenko himself or someone very senior in his entourage tipped off the Chinese. They basically dropped the bombshell. Your foreign minister slept with a British spy. We reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry about this alleged tip. They didn't respond. And the Chinese Foreign Ministry had no comment. and the Chinese Foreign Ministry had no comment. We can't confirm whether the Russians in fact tipped off the Chinese.

But according to Lingling's sources, this is the story that senior Chinese officials were told by their higher-ups to explain Qin's disappearance. According to her sources, the Chinese viewed the tip as a gesture of friendship. China and Russia have become increasingly close in recent years. They share intelligence, and their leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, have common interests. They both see the United States as a big threat to their national interests and they want to get aligned to counter the United States and its allies.

And there's also a big personal component to this relationship. The two leaders really get along very well. They have developed a ritual of wishing each other happy birthday, and they have met in person more than 40 times. The Chinese government hasn't publicly explained Fu's disappearance. And it's possible there's more to the story than what was shared with high-level Chinese officials, that something else was going on. And remember, we can't confirm whether the allegation that Fu was a spy is true or false.

One person close to Fu made the point that the same attributes that might have made her valuable to Western intelligence, her connections, her ties to the UK, also made her vulnerable to spying accusations. Whatever the truth, according to Lingling's sources, Chin was brought in for questioning. What did he know about Fu,

and could he have been a spy himself? The party investigation was not for the faint-hearted, for sure. I was told that it was a very grueling process. What do you mean by grueling? According to our sources, Chen Gang was being questioned day in and day out, having his entire life examined by the party investigators. He was undergoing all that interrogation in a very confined place, isolated

from family and any kind of legal representation. He had to know that his whole career, his whole life was on the line. And according to your sources and reporting, is there any sense that Qin Gang was a spy? Qin Gang was certainly investigated for espionage. According to our sources, he insisted he was innocent and he repeatedly pledged his loyalty to Xi Jinping. But he had an affair with someone who allegedly betrayed the country. So by association, that was a very serious offense. Did Qin have any suspicions about Fu? So according to our sources, when Chinese party investigators

confronted Chen Gang with Fu Xiaotian's possible MI6 connection, Chen Gang was extremely surprised and devastated. Qin suffered a mental breakdown during the investigation, according to Lingling's sources. And at one point, he was on suicide watch at a Chinese military hospital. Just months before he disappeared, he was still riding very high.

He was considered such a rising star in Chinese political system. And all of a sudden, he found himself being investigated for something as serious as espionage? Very hard to take. Espionage is a serious accusation anywhere, but in today's China, it's especially damaging. How concerned is China about foreign espionage right now? Incredibly concerned. Xi Jinping believes that the black hand of Western intelligence is trying to bring him down.

That's Dennis Wilder. Dennis spent 36 years working for the CIA. I was a military analyst on China. I spent time overseas doing operational things. What kind of operational things did you do overseas? What you would expect a spy to do overseas? Spotting, assessing, recruiting of what we call hard targets, the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans. In recent years, the Chinese have been increasingly anxious about foreign spies. And Dennis says that anxiety comes straight from the man in charge.

Xi Jinping thinks we're out to get him personally. He thinks he has to do everything possible to protect himself. There's some history here. A little over a decade ago, China discovered a network of CIA spies working inside its government. Some were high-ranking Chinese officials. What happened there? I'm afraid that is not a subject that I can talk about. Okay. That remains highly classified.

Dennis wouldn't talk about it, but the Wall Street Journal has reported that as many as two dozen CIA assets in China were rounded up, imprisoned, or executed. All of this was happening as Xi was being groomed for power. And as China's leader, he has been intensely focused on national security. Rooting out spies is part of that. The job lands primarily on China's main intelligence agency, its Ministry of State Security, or MSS. What we have seen recently is Xi Jinping promoted the head of the MSS in an unusual step to the very important

polar bureau of the Chinese Communist Party. Also, the MSS has become very open about its activities. They offer money and they give a hotline for Chinese if they suspect somebody of spying. So it's a very aggressive campaign by the Chinese at this point. They're very assertive. Frankly, in the modern era, I've never seen it like this. This was the backdrop to Qin's disappearance. And to Fu's. It's why the spying accusation against her was so serious.

Like Chen Gang, Fu Xiaotian was also investigated. According to our sources, after the Chinese got this tip, Fu Xiaotian was already back in Beijing. So it was very easy to bring her in for questioning. But we do not know the outcome of that investigation into her. The party generally doesn't disclose matters as sensitive as espionage. Under Chinese law, espionage carries serious consequences. Penalties can range from imprisonment to execution.

And often the trials are held in secret. Do we know where she is? No idea. It's quite a mystery exactly what happened to her. What about the baby? We do not know anything about the baby. We asked the Chinese Foreign Ministry about the whereabouts of Fu and her baby. They had no comment.

Just a few years earlier, Fu had been the toast of Beijing, the center of social events like her book launch, when diplomats had taken to the stage to praise her sophistication and grace. Elegance is not something that catches your eyes, but rather elegance is the ability not to be forgotten. But today, Fou seems on her way to being forgotten. But today, Fu seems on her way to being forgotten. In her absence, what we have are rumors, old interviews from her show,

some inactive social media accounts, a garden at an English university. In many ways, Fu has been airbrushed away. But that would prove harder to do with Qin. Qin had been the country's foreign minister, a state counselor, and over a year after his disappearance there had been little indication of what his future could be. And then this summer, the Chinese Communist Party dropped a hint. That's next.

You worked for the CIA? For 20 years, yes. What did you do there? I was the top political analyst on China. That's Chris Johnson, another former CIA official. Chris has been analyzing and observing China for years. Like us, he was captivated by the mystery of Qin Gong's disappearance.

In the summer, he thought there might be an opportunity to learn something about Qin's status. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] There was something called the Third Plenum of the 20th Central Committee. These are plenary sessions. The Third Plenum. It's a high-profile Communist Party meeting,

the kind of event that in past years, Qin would have been part of. Hundreds of party officials converge on Beijing, dressed in black suits and military uniforms. They gather at the Great Hall of the People, in a room draped in revolutionary red. The official goal of the meeting is to discuss economic matters. And it was largely focused on economic matters. But if there's any personnel housekeeping that needs to be done, then oftentimes they will do that as well because the party constitution actually requires them to do it that way if

they're adding or removing members of the central committee. And as I like to say, the Chinese Communist Party doesn't have a lot of rules, but the few that they have, they actually do follow. These personnel changes were what China watchers like Chris and reporters like Lingling were looking out for. At the end of the plenum the party releases a written recap of the meeting, a communique, and when it came out, Lingling scrolled straight down to the personnel section for news. One key change involves our man, Chen Gang. What happened?

So the communique that was issued by state media stated that, quote, Comrade Ching-Gong's resignation request was accepted, and Comrade Ching-Gong was removed from his position as a member of the central committee. In the months after his disappearance, Chin had been stripped of most of his official titles. He was no longer foreign minister and no longer state counselor. But there was one title he'd held onto.

He was still a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee. Now, the party was announcing he'd been stripped of that final title, too. CHIN's high-flying political career was officially over. But crucially, Qin Gang was listed as comrade, comrade Qin Gang, which tells us that he's still a party member. And so he would not still be a party member if they had intention to prosecute him.

So we had a sense then that he was going to be at least spared that, number one. And then number two, it was equally clear they weren't gonna say another thing about his case. It's sort of like Comrade Ching-Gong has left and we're moving on. But Chin still hasn't been seen and the party hasn't explained his absence.

Chris says that's unusual. Almost always there's an instinct inside the system to want to show the system is not rotten. There are a few bad apples and when we find these bad apples, we throw the book at them and you know they go away. So in other words, his having disappeared for months and months and months with no explanation as to what happened to him, that leaves a sort of running sore, if you want to call it that, that the regime in normal times would explain in some way or the other. And it's absolutely clear they don't intend to explain this. And if it was just an extramarital affair, they would. The fact that they're not doing that explains to us that whatever has happened is of great sensitivity to them and highly embarrassing.

Qin's rise to the top of Chinese politics had ended in a spectacular fall. And that failure didn't just reflect on Qin. Xi Jinping trusted Chen Gang so much. Remember, Chen Gang was picked by the top leader himself, before all this went down. So it would be egg on the face of Xi Jinping. Exactly. He decides who gets promoted and who gets demoted. He controls the security, very powerful security apparatus. He decides how to run the world's second largest economy. So he's the one man, right, who makes all those important decisions.

Xi trusted Qin. Xi made Qin China's ambassador to the U.S. He made Qin foreign minister and state counselor. In the end, those decisions backfired. And when they did, Qin, one of the party's rising stars, disappeared. Just like so many others in Xi's China. This practice of secret detention, investigation, torture, execution,

is a kind of practice that's been in existence for many decades. But under Xi Jinping, you know, we have heard more prominent figures disappearing. Under Xi, the net of disappearances has widened. It's not just the usual suspects who disappear, the journalists, activists, corrupt politicians. It's business people, bankers, government advisors, high-level military officials. And in some cases, it's Xi's supporters, like Qin. People had thought that, you know, as long as you're close to Xi Jinping, you're safe. You know, no matter how many bad things you do, you're safe.

You're going to be safe. And obviously, Ching-Kong's downfall showed that the fact that I promoted you is not a guarantee for your political safety down the road. Lingling doesn't write off the possibility that Chin could re-emerge one day, that he won't stay missing. Maybe he'll be granted a low-level government job. There could even be a pension, government health care. It would be a small life,

nothing like the one he had before when he was an actor on the world stage. But whether that happens, whether Chin ever gets to exist again, whether Fu and her baby ever reappear, it'll likely be at the discretion of one man, Xi Jinping. The Missing Minister is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.

I'm your host, Kate Leimbaugh. This series was produced by Annie Minoff and Alan Rodriguez-Espinosa. It was reported by Maria Byrne and Ling Ling Wei. It was edited by Maria Byrne. Additional reporting in this episode from Max Colchester, Anne Simmons, and Warren Strobel. Mary Mathis is our fact checker. Sound design and mixing by Griffin Tanner. Music direction by Nathan Singapok. Music in this episode by Nathan Singapok, Peter Leonard, Griffin Tanner, and Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Nathan Singapok.

Special thanks to Catherine Brewer, Eleanor Cherny, Laura Morris, Alana Patterson, Sarah Platt, Heather Rogers, Aruna Vishwanatha, and to the entire journal team. Thanks for listening. Music