Li Shangfu, a Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Defense, has not made public attention for more than two weeks.The Financial Times reported on Thursday (September 14) that the U.S. government believes that Li Shangfu was investigated by Beijing and has been relieved.
Reuters also reported on the same day that Li Shangfu was scheduled to participate in the annual defense cooperation annual meeting hosted by Vietnam from September 7th to 8th from September 7th to 8th. HoweverMeeting of Vietnamese officials.
The US Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emmanuel, has talked about Li Shangfu's missing on social media several times.
He posted again on social media X (formerly Twitter) on Friday and said again: First: Director Li Shangfu has not been seen or heard for three weeks.Second: He did not appear in a trip to Vietnam.Now, he is absent to meet with the Singaporean General Chief of Singapore because he has been placed under house arrest?
Li Shangfu's last public event was on August 29. At that time, he attended the 3rd China -Africa Peace Security Forum in Beijing and made a keynote speech.In mid -August, Li Shangfu visited Russia and White Ross.
65 -year -old Li Shangfu graduated from the University of Defense Technology and has long worked in the PLA equipment department for a long time.In 2003, Li Shangfu was the director of the Xichang Satellite Launch Center of the General Equipment Department.In January 2016, Li Shangfu served as deputy commander and chief of staff of the newly established strategic support forces. In September 2017, he served as Minister of Equipment Development of the Central Military Commission.
After the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October last year, Li Shangfu was selected as a member of the CPC Central Military Commission and ranked first among members of the Military Commission.After the Chinese government's re -election in March this year, Li Shangfu replaced Wei Fenghe as the State Councilor and Minister of Defense, ranking among the leaders of the party and national -level leaders.
A few months ago, Chinese senior management reorganized the leadership of the Rocket Army.Wang Houbin from the Navy and Xu Xisheng from the Air Force served as commanders and political commissions of the Rocket Army.It is reported that Li Yuchao, former commander of the Rocket Army, and Xu Zhongbo, the former political commissar, were investigated by the corruption case.
In July of this year, the Central Military Commission's Equipment Development Department issued an announcement, deciding to carry out the illegal violation of the regulations for equipment procurement bidding review experts, and publicly solicited the clues of violations of discipline and disciplinary issues in the equipment procurement bidding review activities since October 2017.
The violations and disciplines targeted at the investigation and the governance activities include: inadequate self -discipline, lack of ethics, focusing on checked and correction, and unavoidable avoidance, helping related enterprises, according to the purchaser's hint to designate the bidding for the designated enterprises, and use the evaluation activities to fish for benefits; pull the benefits; pull the benefits; pull the benefits; pull the benefits; pull it.Help and linked in private, focus on checked and corrected offline links, form a small circle of controlling the bid evaluation process, and even hold the results of the review of certain industries for a long time;Protect enterprises and so on.
According to relevant persons, although this investigation was mainly aimed at the review experts, at this time in October 2017, the time with Li Shangfu took over the time of the Minister of Equipment Development of the Central Military Commission in September 2017.In other words, the event is mainly to investigate the issue of Li Shangfu's in charge of the equipment development department.
However, relevant persons also pointed out that it is too early to judge whether Li Shangfu's accident.However, in the case of dense attention from the outside world, if Chinese officials do not give a clear statement in a certain form, it will only increase external guessing. This is not a good thing for the image of the official and Li Tongfu himself.
After late June this year, Qin Gang, a Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs, did not appear publicly for a few weeks, causing widespread attention and guessing the outside world.On July 25, the meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China eliminated Qin Gang's position as a foreign minister.
