HOW LIU JIANCHAO COMPARES TO QIN GANG
Mr Liu and Mr Qin share similarities in personality and experience, both having worked for the foreign ministry’s information department, the training ground for all spokespersons.
Foreign ministry spokespersons, compared to other diplomats, need to have better mastery of foreign language and better communication skills, especially with foreign journalists.
The two men are notably fluent in English, Mr Liu having studied at Oxford University in the 1980s and worked a four-year stint in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. They share the relaxed confidence lacking in many Chinese officials when facing public and foreign guests.
Both are engaging and witty. In 2008, after an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes in anger at then US President George W Bush, Mr Liu remarked in a media briefing: “Maybe I need to watch out, not just for who is raising their hands, but who is taking off their shoes.” Mr Qin joked about being labelled a wolf warrior when he became China’s ambassador to the US. “Now I’m back as the foreign minister, the media have stopped calling me that way. I feel kind of at a loss,” he said last year.
Although Mr Qin’s rhetoric was sometimes fierier, Mr Liu’s tough actions proved his loyalty, leading the party’s campaign in the mid-2010s – named Operation Fox Hunt – to bring back corrupt officials from abroad. Mr Liu showed off his negotiation skills by snaring high-profile fugitives and recovering large sums of absconded money abroad.
Unlike Mr Qin and many other career diplomats, Mr Liu acquired local governance experience by working as a deputy party secretary in a remote county of Liaoning province.
Source: CNA
