China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu was fired on Tuesday two months after he disappeared from public view, becoming the second high-profile minister to lose his job recently without any official explanation.
Li was also removed from his positions as a member of the Central Military Commission – a powerful body headed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping who ultimately commands the armed forces – and as one of China’s five state councillors – a senior position in the cabinet that outranks a regular minister, state broadcaster CCTV reported Tuesday.
The decision was approved by the standing committee of the country’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, according to CCTV. The committee did not name any successor to Li.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The general’s disappearance follows a series of unexplained personnel shakeups that have roiled the country’s upper ranks, including the dramatic ousting of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang in July.
The disappearance and dismissal of two senior ministers in quick succession has raised questions about the governance of Xi, who has made China’s political system even more opaque as he concentrates power and enforces strict party discipline.
Xi has also ramped up a campaign to bolster national security, seeking to eliminate any perceived threats and vulnerabilities to the ruling Communist Party amid rising tensions with the West.
Weeks before Li vanished from public view, Xi convened the military’s top brass in Beijing for a meeting, where he emphasized political loyalty, discipline and the party’s “absolute leadership” over the armed forces.
Days after that meeting, Xi sacked the two top generals of the PLA Rocket Force, an elite unite overseeing the nation’s arsenal of nuclear and ballistic missiles, sparking concerns of a broader purge in the military.
In a sign of his prominence, Zhang was promoted to first vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) during the leadership reshuffle last October despite having well passed the unofficial retirement age.
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