2025 has been both telling and turbulent for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), exposing some structural contradictions even while it tried to project global influence through high-profile diplomacy. On balance, it has been a year of constrained gains, growing uncertainty, and a mounting succession crisis that will only intensify in 2026.
From the public record, several developments stood out. Under the stewardship of Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, and, by extension, leader Xi Jinping, China worked to reinforce its image as a progressive force in the international order. In his December 2024 remarks that shaped much of the diplomatic messaging in 2025, Wang claimed that Chinese diplomacy had “written a new grand chapter of head-of-state diplomacy,” anchored in peace, development, cooperation and win-win outcomes. He reiterated that China, under Xi’s leadership, sought to “safeguard international fairness and justice” and “promote world peace and stability.” These proclamations signaled MOFA’s intent to serve as a source of stability in a world marked by increasing volatility, hinting that Beijing aimed to position itself, at least rhetorically, as a pillar of global order in 2025.
In practice, MOFA registered a set of diplomatic gains. Through the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA), which works closely with the ministry, Beijing rolled out a new wave of “small and beautiful” development projects, from climate-warning systems to new docks across developing countries. CIDCA also reported that China had mobilized over $23 billion under its development agenda in 2025 and launched more than 1,800 cooperation projects in infrastructure, health, green development, and people-to-people exchanges. Clearly MOFA’s Global South strategy remains active and ambitious.
Concurrently, Beijing also strengthened ties through multilateral forums, most notably during its rotating chairmanship of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Under the slogan “Upholding the Shanghai Spirit: SCO on the Move,” China hosted over a hundred events covering security, trade, connectivity, green and digital economy, and cultural exchanges. Within this framework, it also launched a new Global Governance Initiative, signaling an effort to recast global governance along more inclusive, non-Western lines, positioning Beijing as an anchor for the Global South.
Yet beneath the surface of China’s steady diplomacy, 2025 has also laid bare some deep systemic fragilities that will likely intensify existing fault lines in the ministry’s approach in the year ahead. The most conspicuous issue is the persistent leadership and succession uncertainty at the core of China’s foreign policy apparatus. The abrupt removal of Qin Gang in July 2023 after less than eight months in office, the shortest tenure for any foreign minister in the history of the People’s Republic of China, ended up casting a long shadow over the confidence in MOFA’s upcoming leadership. Wang was forced to return to the role, having the unusual double-duty of being both the foreign minister and the Chinese Communist Party’s top foreign policy apparatchik.
Senior diplomat Liu Jianchao, head of the International Liaison Department, was presumed to be the chosen successor to the ministerial post, but in August 2025, Liu was reportedly detained for questioning after a foreign trip. He was abruptly replaced by Liu Haixing. This has created a cascading instability at the apex of China’s diplomatic hierarchy, fueling a growing acknowledgment that the system is failing to identify and cultivate the next generation of foreign-policy leadership. It has also intensified speculation that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is being hollowed out from within. The diplomatic corps is under mounting pressure, and experienced, forward-looking career diplomats may be increasingly disincentivized from seeking the top role.
The implications extend beyond mere personnel management. Wang’s return to the foreign minister post after Qin’s removal had signaled that the Communist Party lacked the confidence in its pipeline of experienced diplomats capable of managing China’s complex global relationships. With Liu Jianchao out of the race, Liu Haixing, now the most probable successor to Wang, does not have sufficient ambassadorial and vice-ministerial experience to assume the role during a period of unprecedented international pressure. Promoting him would represent a downgrading of diplomacy precisely when China requires its most seasoned practitioners.
Conversely, indefinitely extending Wang’s tenure strains an institution already stretched thin by demanding operational requirements. Wang is already 72, past the normal retirement age.
This succession vacuum cannot be divorced from Xi Jinping’s deeper restructuring of China’s foreign policy apparatus. Over the past few years Xi elevated the previously informal Leading Small Group into a fully-fledged Central Foreign Affairs Commission (CFAC), thereby concentrating decision-making authority at the very top of the CCP rather than distributing it across the state’s diplomatic ministry. Under this model, CFAC, not the foreign ministry, became the chief architect of foreign policy, while MOFA increasingly executed decisions formulated elsewhere. However, the arrangement has created a systemic rigidity that has undermined the Foreign Ministry’s traditional role as the guardian of Beijing’s foreign policy.
Thus, while MOFA has registered achievements in external-facing diplomacy, its internal institutional health seems more precarious than at any time in recent memory. The combination of a foreseeable leadership vacuum and centralization under the party’s foreign policy apparatus has arguably weakened its capacity for a flexible and responsive diplomacy, attributes that are increasingly essential in a fast-moving multipolar world.
The structural vulnerabilities inside China’s diplomatic apparatus might have been manageable had the external environment remained permissive. Instead, Beijing enters 2026 facing widening resistance to its coercive statecraft, particularly from the very regions Xi considers central to China’s rise. The November 2025 escalation with Japan, the physical confrontations with the Philippines in the South China Sea, the Taiwan question, China’s cautious rapprochement with India and the sharpening China-U.S. rivalry have all raised the demands placed on China’s foreign policy machinery at precisely the moment when its flexibility is most constrained.
With more than 200 missions worldwide and a global environment marked by conflict, fragmentation and shifting alignments, MOFA is stretched thin at precisely the moment when agile diplomacy is most essential. The result has been a diminishing ability to influence outcomes in major crises. The limited Chinese role in Middle East diplomacy this year, the absence of a meaningful position in Russia-Ukraine negotiations, and muted influence in other regional flashpoints are all signs of its inability to contribute meaningfully as a major power due to institutional constraints.
Whether Beijing recognizes this structural limitation and adjusts accordingly remains the year’s pivotal question. Failure to do so may render the next few years a painful lesson in what happens when the costs of centralization and coercive diplomacy began visibly to outweigh their strategic benefits.
China’s foreign affairs apparatus will head into 2026 managing these competing pressures while simultaneously navigating the succession question, which represents perhaps the most formidable challenge MOFA has faced in the Xi era.
