BEIJING, China
China has replaced Defense Minister, General Li Shangfu, who has been out of public view for almost two months with little explanation, state media reported on Tuesday.
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.
Li, who became defense
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 Qin and
Li signal a change in China's foreign or defense policies, although they have
raised questions about the resilience of president and ruling Communist Party
leader Xi Jinping's circle of power.
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.
Li is under US sanctions
related to his overseeing weapon purchases from Russia that bar him from
entering the country. China has since cut off contacts with the US military,
mainly in protest over US arm sales to Taiwan, but also strongly implying that Washington
must lift the measures against Li, which Beijing refuses to publicly
recognise.
He was last seen in public on
29 August, at a Beijing security forum with African nations.
An aerospace engineer who
began his career at a satellite and rocket launch centre, Gen Li has had a
smooth ascent through the ranks of the military and Chinese political elite.
In 2018, when he headed the
equipment development arm of the military, he was sanctioned by the US
government over China's purchases of Russian combat aircraft and arms.
The sanctions were thought to be a sticking point for Gen Li, who refused to meet his US counterpart Lloyd Austin at a Singapore defence summit earlier this year.
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