Lingling Wei and Charles Hutzler
When Xi Jinping was looking for someone to succeed the abruptly removed Qin Gang as foreign minister last summer, people familiar with the matter say, one name made it to the top of the Chinese leader’s list.
Liu Jianchao was an unusual candidate in many ways. A translator-turned-diplomat, he heads a Communist Party agency traditionally tasked with building ties with other Communist states such as North Korea and Vietnam. His U.S. experience has been relatively limited compared with that of many previous foreign ministers. His stints at the party’s anticorruption watchdog also make him a rarity in the country’s foreign-policy establishment.
But Liu came highly recommended to the leader by senior foreign-affairs officials precisely for his party experience and demonstrated political loyalty—traits especially valued by Xi at a time of heightened party control and emphasis on security, according to the people familiar with the matter.
The top leader decided to give Liu a trial run first, the people said, with the focus on beefing up his experience in dealing with the U.S.—China’s biggest geopolitical rival. As a stopgap measure, Xi reassigned former Foreign Minister Wang Yi to his old post in July.
Now, having taken on a more active diplomatic role in the past six months, including handling a U.S. congressional delegation’s visit to Beijing in the fall, Liu is on track to be named China’s next foreign minister, the people said, likely during the nation’s legislative sessions in March, though they cautioned that no final decision on the timing of the appointment has been made.
China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to questions.
To prepare for his appointment, the people said, Beijing sent Liu to New York, Washington and San Francisco earlier this month to bolster his profile in the U.S.’s foreign-policy and business communities.
During the weeklong trip, Liu interacted with American think tanks such as the Asia Society, investors such as
Blackstone Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman and Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, and Biden administration officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“The Chinese were basically telling us that he’s going to be the next foreign minister,” a U.S. official said. “They were saying, ‘He’s going on to bigger things.’ ”
Throughout his U.S. visit, Liu continued Xi’s effort to tamp down tensions with the U.S. while steadfastly defending China’s policies, from its sovereignty claims over Taiwan and its national-security agenda to its trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure program.
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