Li Shangfu: Where has China’s defense minister gone?

In mid-August, China’s Foreign Minister Li Shangfu traveled to Russia for a security conference. During a subsequent visit to Minsk, he was photographed with the Belarusian ruler Lukashenko. On August 29, the military leader spoke at a security forum of African states in Beijing. After that, the face of the Chinese army disappeared from the scene. The ministry canceled a meeting in September with its Vietnamese counterpart, citing Li’s health.

There has been no trace of him for two weeks now. According to research by the Financial Times and the Reuters news agency, Li was taken out of circulation because of corruption. The authorities are investigating the Chinese defense minister, the media reports, citing ten people who are said to be familiar with the case. According to a regional security official, Li’s procurement of military equipment is intended to make him unpopular with the leadership in Beijing. Eight other senior officials in the procurement department, which Li headed from 2017 to 2022, are also under investigation. However, exactly what Li did wrong and what military equipment was involved remains unclear.

At least he wouldn’t be the first to disappear from his post so easily. China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang was only removed from office at the end of July after disappearing from the public eye for weeks. At the same time, Beijing exchanged two generals from the missile force, whose area of ​​responsibility also includes the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Does Li fall in Xi’s fight against corruption?

Analysts don’t think it’s unusual for high-ranking Chinese officials to be fired because of corruption – but it is not unusual for two cabinet members, Qin and Li, to simply disappear. Especially since both politicians were appointed to their respective positions by President Xi. “There is speculation that his key aides are not sufficiently on his side, so he does this [die Razzien] probably used to further strengthen loyalty to his leadership. Not just from the civilian side, but also from the military side,” Yu Ping, a China expert and former employee of the US-Asia Law Institute at NYU, told the Financial Times.

Li joined the Communist Party in 1980 and the army two years later. In 2016, he was named deputy commander of the military’s then-new Strategic Support Force. The elite unit was intended to accelerate China’s space and cyber warfare capabilities. A year later, Li headed the military procurement department before being personally appointed defense minister by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in March 2023.

The trust was short-lived: four months later, the ministry publicly called for irregularities from Li’s procurement officials to be reported. Now the defense minister has disappeared.

Will Li ever take office again? Questionable. People in Washington are already certain that Li has long since been relieved of his duties. At least that’s what the “Financial Times” reports, citing several US officials and sources familiar with intelligence information. The White House is not commenting publicly on the matter. It therefore remains unclear why Washington suspects that Li may no longer be in office. On the X platform, formerly Twitter, US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emmanuel said Li was under house arrest.

Meanwhile, Beijing remains tight-lipped about the whereabouts of the defense minister. A spokeswoman for the ministry told the AFP news agency that she was “not aware of the situation in question.”

Xi demonstrates his power

The Li case, if the speculation about corruption and investigations is correct, at least reaffirms the power of the Chinese leadership. “If the alleged purge is true, then it (…) suggests that Xi Jinping’s control over the military remains solid,” said Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University. To consolidate his power, Xi could carry out such blatant purges more often, scientists fear. This could lead to members of the Chinese power apparatus continuing to compete for loyalty to the head of state and at the same time endangering politics in Beijing.

But the tensions between Beijing’s top officials are not necessarily good for Chinese politics, writes Guoguang Wu, senior research scholar at the Center on China’s Economy and Institutions at Stanford University, in the journal “The China Leadership Monitor.” China’s attempt to attract foreign investors, for example, has failed in some cases due to national security raids against foreign officials. “Ironically, when the supreme leader controls everything, the regime becomes more politically unstable and inconsistent in terms of governance,” Wu wrote.

Li’s end could ease relations with the USA

Not only China’s ruler Xi would probably benefit from Li’s removal from office – but also the USA. Washington imposed sanctions on the Chinese defense minister in 2018 because of arms purchases from Russia’s largest arms exporter Rosoboronexport. Beijing wanted to promote talks between the Chinese and US militaries, but only if sanctions against Li were lifted. The Chinese leadership had so far refused to meet with him and his US colleague Lloyd Austin because of the sanctions. Talks at a defense conference in Singapore in June failed.

If Li were no longer in office, relations between the military could relax again. However, that depends on two questions: Will Li come back? And if not, who will be his successor? Both are uncertain.

Sources: “”, “”, “”, , with material from AFP