Chinese Defence Minister Gen. Li Shangfu has been replaced after he was missing for almost two months with little explanation.
| Photo Credit: AP

China has replaced Defence Minister Gen. Li Shangfu, who has been out of public view for almost two months with little explanation, state media reported on October 24.

Mr. Li is the second senior Chinese official to disappear this year, following former Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who was removed from office in July with no explanation offered.

Mr. Li, who became Defence Minister during a Cabinet reshuffle in March, hasn’t been seen since giving a speech on August 29. There is no indication that the disappearances of Mr. Qin and Mr. Li signal a change in China’s foreign or defence policies, although they have raised questions about the resilience of president and ruling Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s circle of power.

Mr. Xi has a reputation for valuing loyalty above all and has relentlessly attacked corruption in public and private, sometimes in what has been seen as a method of eliminating political rivals and shoring up his political position amid a deteriorating economy and rising tensions with US over trade, technology and Taiwan.

Mr. Li is under U.S. sanctions related to his overseeing weapon purchases from Russia that bar him from entering the country. China has since cut off contacts with the U.S. military, mainly in protest over U.S. arm sales to Taiwan, but also strongly implying that Washington must lift the measures against Mr. Li, which Beijing refuses to publicly recognise.

Beijing:

China removed former Foreign Minister Qin Gang from the post after an investigation concluded he’d conducted an affair and fathered a child while serving as US ambassador, the Wall Street Journal reported. Top officials were told in August that a Communist Party inquiry into Qin uncovered “lifestyle issues,” the newspaper reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the situation that it didn’t describe. That phrase usually means sexual misbehavior of some type in the parlance of Chinese officialdom.

Two of the people said the affair led to the birth of a child in the US. The probe, with Qin’s assistance, is now focusing on whether or not the affair compromised national security. China is locked in an ideological battle with the US, its chief economic and geopolitical rival, which has seen Beijing intensify a national security drive to shield it from foreign threats.

The Foreign Ministry in Beijing didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.  

China stripped Qin from his ministerial post in July, just seven months after he started the job – making his tenure the shortest in that role. No explanation was given for Qin’s removal as his predecessor Wang Yi was reinstated.

The episode raised questions over President Xi Jinping’s decision-making and the stability of the government running the world’s No. 2 economy. Those concerns are being rekindled by the current unexplained absence of Defense Minister Li Shangfu, amid media reports he’s being probed for corruption.

The ruling Communist Party’s senior ranks are now being scrutinized for their dealings with foreigners, the insiders told the WSJ, adding that the top brass in China’s military were also under the spotlight.

Few Chinese officials have risen as swiftly through the diplomatic ranks as Qin. His big break came in 2015 when he was given oversight of protocol at the foreign ministry. That six-year stint saw him organize state visits of top leaders to China.

It was likely in that role that Qin gained access to Xi. He was pictured beside the Chinese leader during a meeting with then US President Donald Trump in Beijing in 2017.

In 2021, Qin was sent to Washington, while he was still relatively unknown outside diplomatic circles or the Beijing press corps. He showed a flair for public relations, embracing American culture by openly attending a baseball game and riding in a Tesla Inc. with Elon Musk.

He also made moderate remarks on hot topics, arguing Beijing would’ve tried to stop Russia from invading Ukraine if it had known its plans and playing down the risk of a war with Taiwan. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu delivers a speech at XI Moscow conference on international security in the Moscow region, Russia, August 15, 2023. Credit: Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS
| Photo Credit: VIA REUTERS

China’s Defence Minister Li Shangfu has become the latest senior Chinese official caught up in swirling political rumours, with reports on Friday suggesting that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General had been detained over on-going corruption investigations.

Only in July, China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who had been appointed in March, disappeared without explanation from public view for several weeks before a brief announcement declared he had been removed from the post. Three months on, there still hasn’t been any explanation over the reasons behind the sudden removal of one of the most prominent public faces of the Xi Jinping government, who also served as one of five State Councillors – the third highest position in the executive branch of government behind the Premier and Vice Premiers.

On Friday, reports said Mr. Li – who is also one of the five State Councillors – had been detained over ongoing corruption investigations into the military’s Rocket Force – formerly the Second Artillery Corps – which has already seen several senior officials placed under investigation. Mr. Li was the first Chinese Defence Minister – who also serves on the Central Military Commission headed by Mr. Xi – who hailed from the Rocket Force.

While it remains unclear if the apparent removals of two of the most prominent ministers were linked, some of the purges in the Rocket Force were announced days after Mr. Qin’s removal.

Chinese officials on Friday declined to comment on the whereabouts of Mr. Li, who like Mr. Qin, disappeared suddenly from public view. Also as was in the case of Mr. Qin, Beijing explained his absence in diplomatic meetings to “health reasons”.

U.S. officials have said they believe Mr. Li to be in detention by authorities for questioning and to have been removed from his post, according to a Friday report in the Financial Times. Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, commented on the removals in a post on X (formerly Twitter) saying the political developments in Beijing under Mr. Xi were resembling the plot of an Agatha Christie novel. “First, Foreign Minister Qin Gang goes missing, then the Rocket Force commanders go missing, and now Defense Minister Li Shangfu hasn’t been seen in public for two weeks,” he wrote.

What is striking about both Mr. Qin and Mr. Li is they were handpicked and fast-tracked by Mr. Xi to their posts, and both barely lasted six months in their positions.

Mr. Li would become the first Central Military Commission (CMC) member to be removed in several years. Mr. Xi early in his term oversaw the purge of two of the PLA’s highest-ranking Generals on the CMC, and later removed a third, with most observers suggesting the purges had firmly established Mr. Xi’s centralised control over a military that had, under his predecessors, functioned as a state-within-a-state with widespread corruption.

Mr. Xi, now in a precedent-defying third term, has been widely seen as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and as having eliminated all political rivals and challenges. The continuing purges, however, suggest otherwise, even if the black box of Chinese politics leaves observers with little information to ascertain what is unfolding behind the scenes.

If those early removals reflected a battle being waged to establish control over the military, the latest cases are more puzzling. Yet another removal of one of the PLA’s highest ranking Generals would suggest serious unresolved issues regarding Mr. Xi’s control over the military, which has been the target of several sweeping corruption investigations during his decade at the helm.