Chinese defence minister Li Shangfu abruptly pulled out of a meeting with Vietnamese defence leaders last week, three officials with direct knowledge of the matter said, amid questions about his more than two-weeks-long absence from public view.
Li, 65, was due to attend an annual gathering on defence cooperation hosted by Vietnam on its border with China on Sept. 7-8 but the meeting was postponed after Beijing told Hanoi days before the event that the minister had a "health condition," two Vietnamese officials said.
The abrupt cancellation of Li's trip follows China's unexplained replacement of Foreign Minister Qin Gang in July after a prolonged absence from public view and a shake-up of the leadership of the People's Liberation Army'sQin'sthrough the ranks of the Communist Party was partly attributed to his closeness to President Xi Jinping, making his removal after just seven months on the job even more unexpected.
Asked about Emanuel's post this week, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told reporters she was "not aware of the situation." "Li's disappearance, following so shortly after Qin, speaks to how mysterious Chinese elite politics can be to the outside world," said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.Li was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 for buying weapons from Russia's largest arms exporter, Rosoboronexport.
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