Two down and who knows how many more to go. This week, Defence Minister Li Shangfu became the latest of China’s top leaders to vanish, reportedly caught up in a corruption scandal. He has not been seen for three weeks and his disappearance comes three months after that of foreign minister, Qin Gang, and follows a purge at the top of China’s Rocket Force, which oversees its rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal. Li lasted just six months in the job, having been appointed in March. At a security forum in Beijing late last month, one of his last public appearances, Li said the world was entering a period of ‘instability’ – though that term would seem to apply more aptly to the top echelons of the Chinese Communist party.
Reuters reports that the investigation into Li relates to the period 2017 to 2022, when he was head of the People Liberation Army’s equipment procurement unit, a notoriously corrupt part of the military.
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