BEIJING: China named former navy chief Dong Jun as its new defence minister on Friday (Dec 29), filling a emptiness created by the removing of Li Shangfu in October.
The appointment comes as President Xi Jinping upgrades the navy as a part of his push to make China a dominant world power, a aim that has alarmed many neighbours.
Dong, 62, was appointed at a gathering of the standing committee of China’s Nationwide Folks’s Congress, state information company Xinhua stated.
The function of China’s defence minister is to be the general public face of the Folks’s Liberation Military in its engagement with the media and with different armed forces.
An important factor of his job is to engage with the United States military to decrease the chance of battle over Taiwan and the South China Sea, two flashpoints to which Dong is not any stranger.
Earlier than changing into the Folks’s Liberation Military Navy chief and made a full basic in 2021, he was vice commander of the East Sea Fleet, the spine of what’s now the Japanese Theatre Command – the primary pressure liable for combating over Taiwan, a self-ruled island China considers its personal.
He additionally served as vice commander of the Southern Theatre Command which operates within the disputed South China Sea, most of which is claimed by China.
“Dong can be aware of managing near-encounters between the Chinese language and US navy. That is helpful when he has to handle crises between each militaries,” stated Li Mingjiang, a global relations scholar on the Rajaratnam College of Worldwide Research in Singapore.
Wen-Ti Sung, political scientist and non-resident fellow on the Atlantic Council’s World China Hub, stated the number of Dong might be an indication that purges are ongoing within the Rocket Drive and Tools Growth Division.
The 2 previous defence ministers, who got here from these two forces, have since disappeared from public view.
Beijing has not defined Li’s disappearance however stripped him of his title as defence minister and state councillor in October.
Li had headed the division in control of tools procurement and analysis earlier than taking over the defence minister job in March. He has not been seen in public since Aug 25.
Reuters cited sources to report that Li was below investigation for corruption associated to tools procurement and improvement.