Editor’s note for July 19, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader:
China’s Foreign Minister Qín Gāng 秦刚 is still missing. The only official explanation so far is that he has health problems.
As Lingling Wei of the Wall Street Journal notes in a piece focusing on how Beijing is “assuring Washington the recent thaw in high-level contacts will continue despite the diplomat’s absence from public view,” the health issues are often used by the Party to explain away problems:
When Wáng Lìjūn 王立军, the former head of police in the inland megacity of Chongqing, went missing in February 2012, the city government said he was taking “vacation-style [medical] treatment” for stress and overwork. In reality, he had fled to the U.S. consulate in the nearby city of Chengdu to seek asylum.
Our Word of the Day is: vacation-style medical treatment (休假式治疗 xiūjià shì zhìliáo).
