China Appoints Former Navy Chief as New Defense Minister

Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy soldiers and officers attend a ceremony in Beijing on Sept. 16, 2013. (Feng Li/Getty Images)

China has appointed former navy chief, Adm. Dong Jun, as its new defense minister, state media reported, capping months-long speculation about the replacement of the military’s top diplomat amid instability in the regime’s top ranks.

On Friday, delegates of China’s rubber-stamp legislature approved Adm. Dong’s appointment, according to state media Xinhua.

The 62-year-old former navy commander will succeed Gen. Li Shangfu, who was fired in October following two months of disappearance without any explanation.

Unlike his predecessors, Adm. Dong is not a member of the Central Military Commission (CMC), a seven-member body that runs the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). China’s defense minister doesn’t have a major say in the military in the regime’s opaque political system. The armed forces are a branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rather than the armed forces of the country. The party’s top leader, Xi Jinping, is the chairman of the CMC.

Potential Implications on US-China Ties

Adm. Dong rose in the ranks through the navy. Before becoming the chief of the PLA’s navy in 2021, he served as deputy commander of a force unit currently known as the Eastern Theater Command Navy, which was responsible for conducting drills in the water and air near Taiwan, a self-ruled island that the CCP has claimed as part of its territory. The Party’s top leader has declared that he would “never promise to renounce the use of force” to seize Taiwan.

The new defense minister also had experience in commanding another PLA unit, the Southern Theatre Command, which is responsible for operating in disputed waters in the South China Sea.

Tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea are among the flashpoints in the fraught relations between China and the United States. The Chinese regime canceled the interaction with Washington on military and several other major areas last August, following then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. On Dec. 21, military officials from the two countries had their first communication in nearly two years.

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During the short tenure of Gen. Li, he didn’t have a formal meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The regime has said, in exchange for talks, Washington must lift sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Gen. Li in 2018 over his role in allegedly purchasing fighter jets and equipment from Russia’s main arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, a request rejected by the State Department.

Instability in Beijing’s High Ranks

A notable element missing in Adm. Dong’s public resume is that he has no direct contact with Mr. Xi. In comparison, Gen. Li was widely known as a member of Mr. Xi’s political circle, known in Chinese as “second generation red,” a term referring to sons or daughters of high-ranking Communist Party cadres who helped Mao Zedong seize control of the country in 1949. His father, Li Shaozhu, was a Red Army veteran and deputy commander of the PLA railway force.

Adm. Dong’s appointment came amid what appeared to be an ongoing purge of the military. The regime provided no explanation for the dismissal of the former defense minister, which came merely seven months after he was appointed to the post. Multiple media reports indicated that Gen. Li was placed under investigation by the Chinese authorities for suspected corruption related to military equipment procurement.

The regime won’t comment on such reports. When asked whether Gen. Li’s dismissal was related to the anti-corruption probe at a monthly briefing in October, the defense ministry’s spokesperson simply said he had “no information to release.”

The former defense minister hasn’t been heard from publicly for four months. His last public appearance was on Aug. 29, when he addressed a security forum and held talks with visiting defense ministers from Ghana, Zambia, and several other African countries.

The dismissal of Gen. Li came after several unexplained disappearances and replacements of senior officials and generals, fueling speculation about potential turmoil within the upper echelons of the Party’s leadership under Mr. Xi. In August, China abruptly replaced two top commanders in charge of the country’s nuclear arsenal unit, which outside observers called the biggest reshuffle in the top level of the CCP’s military in recent years.

In the latest sign of the unrest in the military, the CCP on Wednesday removed three aerospace-defense leaders from its 2,000-plus political advisory body, called the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. All ousted were executives from the country’s biggest defense-technology firms.