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Vladimir Putin sent his number two top diplomat to China over the summer to ring the alarm about potentially compromised Chinese officials, it has been claimed.
According to recently surfaced reports, Andrey Rudenko warned Chinese leader Xi Jinping that former Foreign Minister Qin Gang and several other top officials had become overly friendly with Western agencies.
Rudenko is a trusted ally of Putin and is the second highest-ranking member of Russia’s Foreign Ministry after chief Sergey Lavrov.
The claims, shared by Politico, cite “several people with access to high-level Chinese officials” and offer insight into Qin’s recent disappearance.
The report said: “Russian Deputy Minister Rudenko’s message to Xi included allegations that Qin and relatives of top rocket force officers had helped pass Chinese nuclear secrets to Western intelligence agencies.”
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After serving as China’s ambassador to the United States for two years, he was handed a cushy job as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2022.
However, Qin disappeared from the public eye within weeks of hosting Rudenko in Beijing in the summer only for the Chinese government to confirm he had been banished from politics alongside several others.
Rumours then began to circulate claiming the top diplomat had fathered an illegitimate son who is a US citizen and who went on to study at Cambridge University – a well-known recruiting ground for British intelligence.
Among those purged was Defence Minister Li Shangfu, who previously commanded China’s manned space programme.
Both Li and Qin had been personally handpicked by Xi Jinping less then a year before they were ousted.
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The duo were removed as part of a wider Stalin-style investigation into China’s top political circles and the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force overseeing the country’s nuclear arsenal.
The head of the force, Li Yuchao, disappeared around the same time Qin did alongside two of his top advisers Liu Guangbin and Zhang Zhenzhong.
They were reportedly all placed under anti-graft investigation amid allegations they had accepted compensation for services performed in their official capacity.
Since taking power in 2012, Xi has led multiple purges to remove millions of government officials but it is the first time big-name loyalists come under the spotlight.
The political issues the Chinese leader is facing add to an already-long list of challenges the country has been facing since the coronavirus pandemic forced most of its society into a drastic lockdown.
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