used ot be important (qian qichen was quite powerful), but now the status is down a lot. even the highest rank one dai bg is not a member of the 25-person poliburo, compared with other big countries it's very unusaul, let alone to compare to the status of hilary clinton.

FM officials, due to their unique tasks, have ot be soft in many speeches, no matter which country. for example, even though america recently being quite tough on china, but the ambassador huntsman never uttered strong words (except that "crazy bad" BJ weather comment).

and furthermore, china's FM is widely viewed as very soft, ever since tang jiaxuan's era.

so it's no surprise that some FM guys might say those kind of comments