Task of dispelling doubts on Chinese economy falls on Wang Yi, but top diplomat is hardly persuasive

BEIJING – After headlining nine successive annual meet-the-press sessions, top diplomat Wang Yi thought he had retired from this much-watched arena in 2023 after handing the baton to the short-lived foreign minister Qin Gang. Even after Mr Qin got the boot and Mr Wang got his old job back, there was still some anticipation that a new foreign minister - the Communist Party's international liaison chief Liu Jianchao had the most bets - would be named at the 2024 annual parliamentary session. But that did not come to pass. Instead, on March 7, the 70-year-old Mr Wang, who concurrently holds…