Why did the Chinese Defense Minister, who repeatedly visited Russia, disappear?

Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu has been removed from his post and is currently under investigation for corruption. This was reported on September 15 by The Washington Post and The Economist, citing officials in the White House who are aware of the findings of US intelligence.

The publications’ interlocutors note that Lee has not appeared in public since the end of August and missed scheduled meetings with the heads of the defense departments of Vietnam and Singapore. The minister was last seen delivering a keynote speech at the third China-Africa Peace and Security Forum on August 29.

This is not the first time senior Chinese officials have suddenly disappeared from the public eye in recent months. In July, Chinese President Xi Jinping fired Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who had served in this post for only seven months. Qin had also not appeared in public for a long time. And in the same month, the Chinese Ministry of Defense announced the launch of a large-scale corruption investigation into the procurement of weapons and equipment starting in 2017.

Li Shangfu himself headed the equipment development department of the Central Military Commission from 2017 to 2022. However, in July, the defense department did not specify whether the current Minister of Defense would become involved in the case. The trial also coincided with the resignation of two senior Chinese generals in charge of China’s nuclear forces, who also had not been seen in public for months. They were suspected of leaking classified information.

The first to notice Lee’s absence from the public sphere was the US Ambassador to Japan, former adviser to former US President Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, on his page on X (formerly Twitter) on September 8. Emanuel wrote that the sudden disappearances of Chinese officials remind him of Agatha Christie novels.

On 15 September, the Ambassador noted Lee’s absence from talks with Singapore Navy Chief Shaun Wat during his trip to China from 4 to 9 September. At the same time, as reported by Reuters, citing Vietnamese officials, the Chinese minister suddenly refused to meet with Vietnamese defense officials at the annual meeting on defense cooperation between the two countries “for health reasons.” At the same time, at a briefing on September 15, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said that the department did not have information regarding the reasons for Li’s absence.

In his capacity as Defense Minister, Lee visited Russia twice: on April 16 in Moscow, he held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and on August 15, he took part in the 11th Moscow Conference on International Security.

One of the versions of the reasons for the alleged removal of Li Shanfu is Beijing’s desire to restore dialogue between the Ministry of Defense and the United States with minimal image losses, said Alexander Lomanov, head of the Center for Asian-Pacific Studies at the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences. As the expert explained, previously it was not possible to restore dialogue at the military level of the two countries, since Li Shangfu was under sanctions and the Americans refused to lift them.

Washington imposed sanctions on a Chinese official in 2018 over the alleged Russian purchase of Su-35 combat aircraft and equipment for the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system, which Li oversaw. Since then, China has refused to negotiate with the Americans on defense issues. Lomanov did not rule out that Lee could be transferred to another high-ranking position. “Chinese politics is not inclined to throw out scandals and rumors; behind the scenes there are hardware games, which makes personnel appointments sometimes difficult to explain,” the expert added.

The disappearance of Li Shangfu may be related to the ongoing anti-corruption investigations in the Chinese army since Xi Jinping came to power, says Igor Denisov, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO. It has been announced that the Minister of Defense cannot take part in consultations with his Vietnamese counterpart due to illness. “If this is just a “diplomatic explanation” and not a real reason, then the minister’s fate is still not predetermined. He was probably only suspended from office for the duration of an internal investigation, for which the Discipline Inspection Commission under the Military Council of the CPC Central Committee is responsible in the army,” the expert concluded.