Li Shangfu has been China’s Defense Minister for only six months before he was hit by a corruption scandal that could ruin the successful career of this 65-year-old veteran general. Many rumors have been circulating since he disappeared from the public sphere at the end of August. The weeks went by and there was no trace of the minister in the events and meetings that appeared on his agenda.
After a hectic summer in Chinese politics, in which high military commanders to a Foreign Minister have fallen, it was inevitable that alarms and speculation would be triggered in the absence of Li, especially considering that this was happening in a country nothing transparent when it comes to giving explanations when these mysterious disappearances happen.
In Beijing the silence continues. There are no official statements regarding this. They are not expected either. But Chinese officials no longer hide that there is an ongoing corruption investigation into Li Shangfu for a plot related to the purchase of military equipment. To understand the case, first you have to go back a few years and draw a few strokes of the character.
The son of a high-ranking commander, Li fought under Mao Zedong during the civil war and also in the Korean War, supporting the Northern side. But Li was not a skilled soldier, but one of the best aerospace engineers of his generation. What he was good at was sending rockets into space. He worked at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in western China, an institution operated by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). There he directed the launch of China’s first lunar probe and also the first test of anti-satellite missiles.
Nine years ago, rewarded for his achievements, he was promoted to general and chief of staff of the PLA Strategic Support Force, an organization that was responsible for retiring old army commanders and moving the right pieces so that the fighting force largest in the world, rusty in many of its departments, began to modernize, starting with the acquisition of modern military equipment. The latter was his main task and for this reason he was sanctioned by the United States: supervised the purchase of Russian Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 air defense missile systems.