China quietly scrubs ousted defense minister Li Shangfu from website

By Bloomberg News

China has removed Li Shangfu’s name from the Defense Ministry’s official website, the latest sign that the former defense minister who was unexpectedly removed from his post late last year is in trouble.
 

The list of top leaders in the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission no longer carries Li’s name, according to a check of the official website on Monday. Li was among those listed until at least Jan. 3, according to archived internet data. 

Picked for the defense minister job in early 2023, Li was ousted from his role without explanation in October. He was stripped of his state councilor title and membership in the government’s CMC. 

But in a move that underscored the parallel party/government structure in China, Li’s name remained for a period on the website showing members of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission. There has not been any formal announcement of a probe into Li, or about his seat on the party’s CMC.

According to the Chinese Communist Party’s charter, the composition of the party’s CMC is decided by the Central Committee, which is due to meet for a third time since the party congress in 2022. That conclave normally takes place in October or November, but has so far been delayed without explanation. 

The move comes after President Xi Jinping launched a sweeping purge of the military establishment last year. US spies believe the decision was in response to the discovery of widespread corruption in the military, including in the Rocket Force, which manages the country’s expanding nuclear arsenal.

China’s former Defense Minister Wei Fenghe, who once led the Rocket Force, was missing from a list of retired cadres who received greetings from the top leadership ahead of the Lunar New Year this month, an unusual omission that also coincides with the military purge. 

China named Dong Jun, a navy veteran, as the new defense minister on Dec 29. 

Li wasn’t the only top official to be abruptly purged in the past year. Foreign Minister Qin Gang, a former ambassador to the US, was removed from his post just seven months into the job, and hasn’t been seen in public since.