China’s foreign minister goes missing

At some point the ill-explained, weeks-long disappearance of China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, will come to an end. Quite possibly Mr Qin—a suavely confident diplomat of the iron-fist and velvet-glove type, rocket-propelled to high office by a spell as an aide to President Xi Jinping—will quietly resume his duties, just as suddenly as he stopped work after a day of meetings on June 25th. Perhaps he will explain the undefined health issues that remain the only official reason for his absence. Still, it cannot be excluded that Mr Qin’s career path is about to take a grimmer turn. That would vindicate Beijing’s elite gossip mill, which is currently seething with ever-wilder theories about Mr Qin, some of them worthy of a bad romantic novel or spy thriller.