LEAPFROG definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/leapfrog
1. uncountable noun
Leapfrog is a game which children play, in which a child bends over, while others jump over their back.
2. verb
If one group of people leapfrogs into a particular position or leapfrogs someone else, they use the achievements of another person or group in order to make advances of their own.
Example:
The Washington Post: China’s ‘disappeared’ foreign minister demoted to low-level publishing job, say former U.S. officials
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/09/08/qin-gang-whereabouts-foreign-minister/
His rise was meteoric, his fall equally abrupt. Ever since the summer of 2023, when then-Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang mysteriously disappeared from public view, his fate has been the subject of intense speculation.
...
Wild rumors abounded: He’d been imprisoned. Killed himself. None was true.
In fact, Qin is alive but, according to two former U.S. officials, in a position very diminished from his once-lofty perch close to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Qin has been nominally assigned to a low-level job at a publishing house affiliated with the Chinese Foreign Ministry, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The former officials say that Qin, 58, has been placed — at least on paper — at a job with World Affairs Press(世界知识出版社), a state-owned publishing house affiliated with the Foreign Ministry.
...
As a Xi loyalist, Qin was promoted to foreign minister at record speed. At 56, he was not only tapped as minister but also elevated to state councilor, a senior position that Wang Yi, Qin’s predecessor, did not achieve until his 60s, after five years as foreign minister.
His rapid rise irked colleagues, who saw him as leapfrogging others, said Christopher K. Johnson, a former senior CIA China analyst and now the head of China Strategies Group, a consultancy.