The fall from grace of General Li Shangfu, China’s Minister of Defense, is no longer speculation. Yesterday, President Xi Jinping signed the impeachment, which also implies the termination as Councilor of State and the exclusion of the Central Military Commission.
Neither the whereabouts nor the reasons for the removal have been clarified. Li, who had been in office for just seven months, was last seen in late August at a Sino-African defense forum.
In September, the US ambassador to Tokyo, Rahm Emanuel, was the first to alert about his mysterious absence. This was added to the sudden dismissal of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Qin Gang, who has also been missing since the beginning of the summer. Both had been personally elected by Xi Jinping, in his anomalous third term.
Despite the fact that Qin was replaced months ago by his predecessor, Wang Yi, the order signed yesterday by the Chinese president also relieves him of the position of Councilor of State. In his case, he would have weighed his extramarital relationship with a television correspondent in Washington, Fu Xiaotian, with whom he allegedly had a child.
In Li’s case, there is speculation that his responsibility for the acquisition of S-400 anti-aircraft batteries and Sukhoi-35 fighter-bombers from Russia would not have stood up to Xi’s anti-corruption magnifying glass.
These purchases, on the other hand, led the US to place it on its sanctioned list, under Donald Trump. Although Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, later wanted to interview him, Xi Jinping roundly refused until his name was removed from the blacklist.
His removal removes that deadlock, but leaves his post vacant just four days before the start of the Xiangshan Forum in , China’s most important annual defense gathering.
This year, in addition, it will have a delegation from the USA. Almost simultaneously, the Chinese foreign minister is scheduled to meet in Washington with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken, to plan a meeting between the two presidents before the end of the year.
General Shangfu played an important role over the past three decades in China’s satellite launch and lunar exploration programs. His eclipse, like Qin’s, underlines Xi Jinping’s control over the upper echelons of both the state and the military.
Public television CCTV also announced the departure of the Minister of Science and Technology, Wang Zhigang, who will be replaced by Yin Hejun, until now the secretary of the Communist Party in this ministry. Also jumps the Minister of Finance, Liu Kun, replaced by Lan Fo’an.
It should be added that yesterday, for the first time since he became president, Xi Jinping set foot on the People’s Bank of China, which is the central or issuing bank. His visit, accompanied by the Deputy Prime Minister, He Lifeng, coincides with the raising of the budget deficit threshold for 2023 from 3% to 3.8% of GDP, by the Standing Committee of the People’s Assembly national A stimulus that aims to support the recovery of the Chinese economy, higher than expected in the third quarter.
Xi Jinping’s ascendancy over all organs of power is unprecedented since Mao. As long as the beacon of the purges is the fight against corruption at the highest levels of the party, in the Government and in the army, it will also be able to count on popular approval.
Its explicit goal is to have a modern military by 2035, comparable to that of the US, by the centenary of the People’s Republic of China in 2049.
