{"id":58489,"date":"2023-09-19T10:22:49","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T01:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/sep\/19\/general-li-shangfu-china-defence-minister-missing-xi-jinping-vetting"},"modified":"2023-09-19T10:22:49","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T01:22:49","slug":"where-is-li-shangfu-chinas-missing-defence-minister-highlights-xis-total-grip-on-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=58489","title":{"rendered":"Where is Li Shangfu? China\u2019s missing defence minister highlights Xi\u2019s total grip on power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>China\u2019s latest missing minister underscores the move to centralised rule, and how questioning Xi\u2019s judgement has become increasingly dangerous<\/p>\n<p>Three weeks after he was last seen in public, there is still no official confirmation about what has happened to Gen Li Shangfu, China\u2019s defence minister and the latest senior official to be seemingly swept up in China\u2019s political purges.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Reuters reported that Li, along with eight other senior officials, was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/sep\/15\/china-defence-minister-li-shangfu-missing\">under investigation<\/a> for the corrupt procurement of military equipment relating to his time at the helm of the equipment division of the Central Military Commission, the military\u2019s ruling body, between September 2017 and October 2022. US intelligence has also made similar conclusions.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/sep\/19\/general-li-shangfu-china-defence-minister-missing-xi-jinping-vetting\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China\u2019s latest missing minister underscores the move to centralised rule, and how questioning Xi\u2019s judgement has become increasingly dangerousThree weeks after he was last seen in public, there is still no official confirmation about what has happened &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3706,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,42,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-world-news","category-xi-jinping"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58490,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58489\/revisions\/58490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}