Qin Gang

Qin Gang (born 19 March 1966) is a Chinese former diplomat and politician who served as the 12th Minister of Foreign Affairs from December 2022 to July 2023 and as State Councillor from March to October 2023.

Qin previously served as Ambassador of China to the United States from 2021 to 2023, vice minister of foreign affairs of China from 2018 to 2021, director of protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2015 to 2018, and director of information at Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2011 to 2015. He disappeared from public view in June 2023 and was removed from the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs on 25 July 2023. According to The Washington Post, Qin had been demoted to a position at an MFA-affiliated publishing house as of September 2024.

Qin Gang was born in Tianjin, China on 19 March 1966.

Qin received a Bachelor of Law with a major in international politics from the University of International Relations in 1988.

After his graduation from college, Qin worked as a staff member at the Beijing Service Bureau for Diplomatic Missions. In 1992, he entered China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as attaché and Third Secretary at the Department of West European Affairs. Later, he worked at the Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom as Secretary and Counselor from 1995 to 2005, and worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information Department as the Deputy Director-General and spokesman from 2005 to 2010.

In September 2010, Qin was appointed as the Envoy of the People's Republic of China to the United Kingdom. In December 2011, he returned to Beijing to serve as the director general of the Foreign Ministry Information Department. From 2014 to 2017, Qin served as the Director General of the Foreign Ministry Protocol Department. He became Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs of China in 2017 and Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of China in September 2018.

In July 2021, Qin became the 11th Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the United States, succeeding Cui Tiankai, pursuant to a National People's Congress Standing Committee decision.

On 22 September 2021, Qin advocated the CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping's concept of whole-process people's democracy at a conference organized by U.S. think tanks the Carter Center and The George H.W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations, stating, "Isn't it obvious that both China's people-center philosophy and President Lincoln's 'of the people, by the people, for the people' are for the sake of the people? [...] Shall we understand China's socialist whole-process democracy as this: from the people, to the people, with the people, for the people?"