After ex-foreign minister, has China's defence minister Li Shangfu disappeared?

China is playing the vanishing act. Even as Xi Jinping decided to give the G20 Summit a miss in New Delhi, it was the absence of another Chinese official that got the internet buzzing. Rumours have been circulating over the nonappearance of Minister of National Defence Li Shangfu from the public view, with United States Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel even commenting on it on social media platform X, last Friday.

President Xi's cabinet lineup is now resembling Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None. First, Foreign Minister Qin Gang goes missing, then the Rocket Force commanders go missing, and now Defense Minister Li Shangfu hasn't been seen in public for two weeks. Who's going…

— ジョージ・グラス駐日米国大使 (@USAmbJapan) September 8, 2023

This is the second high-profile disappearance in China – earlier, former Foreign Minister Qin Gang has also remained missing from public view. What’s going on in Beijing? What do we know? Life and times of Li Shangfu Before we deep dive into Li Shangfu’s reported disappearance, let’s take a closer look at who he is. Li Shangfu was made the defence minister of China in March this year, replacing Wei Fenghe, who stepped down from the central military commission at the Communist Party’s congress in October last year. Interestingly, unlike past Chinese defence ministers, Li comes from a military family. Li’s late father, Li Shaozhu, was a Red Army veteran who fought in the anti-Japanese war of the late 1930s and 1940s. He was also well-known for his role in rebuilding logistical railways during the civil war and Korean war which followed. The senior Li was later put in charge of the PLA’s strategic Railway Force in the border regions of Tibet and Yunnan from the 1950s to 1970s. The 65-year-old Chinese was sanctioned by the US State Department in 2018 for purchasing Russian weapons, including 10 Su-35 combat aircraft and equipment related to the S-400 surface-to-air missile system. [caption id=“attachment_13110602” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Li Shangfu joined the Chinese army in 1978 and four years later, he joined China’s manned space programme. He has climbed the ranks steadily and earlier this year, Xi Jinping named him as the replacement to Wei Fenghe as the defence minister. File image/AP[/caption] Prior to being elevated to defence minister, Li was an aerospace engineer by profession and worked on China’s satellite programme. His credentials include the modernisation effort of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and accelerating the development of China’s space and cyberwarfare capabilities. At the time of his promotion, James Char, a security scholar at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, had been quoted by The Independent as saying that he could play a key role in Xi Jinping’s goals to become “a world-class military”. A man who lived away from the public and media glare, his first major international event as China’s defence minister was the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June. And as experts stated, he showed himself to be “a tough military diplomat”, with his speech and in his rhetoric when engaging with his foreign counterparts. Notably, he also displayed his humble side during the Q&A session after his speech. When asked by forum guests what strategies and combat tactics the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) had learned from the fierce and ongoing war in Ukraine, he said only that as a military diplomat he was not familiar with that area. Li Shangfu’s disappearing act News of Li Shangfu’s ‘disappearance’ got traction on X, the rebranded Twitter, courtesy a tweet from US ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel. He was last seen on 29 August, addressing the China-Africa forum in Beijing, as per the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based English language newspaper. Prior to that, Li had travelled to Russia and Belarus on a six-day visit in August, which indicated China’s sign of support to Moscow during the ongoing Ukraine war. In Minsk, where he met President Alexander Lukashenko, Li also vowed that his country would increase military cooperation with Russia’s neighbour and ally. [caption id=“attachment_13110632” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko and Chinese defence minister Li Shangfu attend a meeting in Minsk, Belarus. File image/Reuters[/caption] The news of his disappearance comes amid reports that Li may be facing investigations for alleged corruption and “serious disciplinary violations. Jennifer Zeng, a member of the International Press Association, who provides first-hand information and unique insights about China and the Chinese Communist Party, reported that Chinese commentator Cai Shenkun had stated that Li was facing a probe over corruption allegations during his time as the minister of the Equipment Development Department in 2017.

Another one?#CCP’s #DefenseMinister #LiShangfu Said to be Under Investigation - #PLA Cleanup Continues?
Li Shangfu has just come back from #Russia and is still on the #US sanction list. He has refused to meet his US counterpart since he became the defense minister.
(Turn on… pic.twitter.com/ozQ46Oc4x9

— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferzeng97) September 7, 2023

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The first vanishing act Before questions were asked about Li Shangfu, China also had the vanishing act of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang. In July, he was ousted from his post even as he remained absent from public view for over a month. In fact, Qin was last seen in public on 25 June. In his last public appearance, a smiling Qin was seen walking side by side with Russian deputy foreign minister Andrey Rudenko, who flew to Beijing to meet with Chinese officials after a short-lived insurrection by the Wagner mercenary group in Russia. No one knows what happened to Qin since June; he was meant to meet European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on 4 July, but EU officials announced that China had cancelled the talks without explanation. [caption id=“attachment_13110652” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Former Chinese foreign minister was ousted from his post even as he remained absent from public view for over a month. File image/AP[/caption] He also failed to attend closely-watched meetings with United States Treasury secretary Janet Yellen and US climate envoy John Kerry. When asked about his absence, the Chinese foreign ministry said Qin’s absence was due to “ health reasons” but omitted that explanation from official transcripts. Chinese officials have since dodged questions about Qin’s health or his whereabouts. Many Chinese watchers had suspected something sinister. They speculated that Qin may have ran afoul of the party bosses and become the target of a purge, or was the subject of an investigation for unknown infractions. Interestingly, a narrative had emerged that Qin had an affair — and possibly a child — with a journalist at a Chinese-language television network. People go ‘missing’ in China While Li Shangfu and Qin Gang are two of the biggest ministers who have gone ‘missing’, China has taken the practice of “disappearing” high-profile figures to new heights. Earlier in May, Duan Weihong, once considered one of China’s wealthiest women, made a public reappearance after five years. She had vanished from her Beijing office in 2017 as Chinese Communist Party investigators probed her links to Sun Zhengcai, a former government minister who is serving a life sentence in China after admitting to taking millions of dollars in bribes. In November 2021, the tennis world was shocked when Peng Shuai, a three-time Olympian, disappeared after she claimed in a social media post that China’s former vice premier Zhang Gaoli forced himself on her in his bedroom while his wife stood guard outside. The post was removed from the Internet, and China insisted that she was “resting at home”. She later retracted her allegation, saying there had never been any sexual assault and in February 2022, appeared at the Beijing Winter Olympics. She then announced her retirement from tennis and it is unclear where she currently resides. [caption id=“attachment_13110662” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Fan Bingbing, a noted movie star, disappeared for four months in 2018. Her manager and others around her also vanished. She later appeared in public view and thanked the Chinese authorities for ‘disappearing’ her. File image/AP[/caption] In another case of a vanishing act, Fan Bingbing, a noted movie star, disappeared for four months in 2018. Her manager and others around her also vanished. Rumours surfaced online that she was being held as authorities investigated her for tax evasion. In 2019, Fan broke her silence in an interview in which she appeared to thank the Chinese authorities for “disappearing” her. [caption id=“attachment_13110672” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] In 2020, Alibaba founder and billionaire Jack Ma went missing from the media after he criticised China’s financial regulators. File image/AP[/caption] And perhaps the biggest name to have vanished from the public view was that of Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba. In 2020, he went missing from the media after he criticised China’s financial regulators. In March this year, he made a rare appearance at a school founded by Alibaba partners in the eastern city of Hangzhou. With inputs from agencies