Tag: foreign minister Qin Gang

BEJING: A mystery surrounding the status of China’s defense minister is raising questions about turbulence within President Xi Jinping’s new line-up of loyalist leaders less than a year into his third term. Li Shangfu hasn’t been seen in public for more than two weeks, with a steady trickle of reports suggesting that China’s fourth-most senior military figure is the latest top Communist Party official to be abruptly ousted from the upper echelons of Xi’s ranks. The US government believes the defense minister has been stripped of his duties...