Xi Jinping attempts to stop the rot by purging his own appointees

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

PLA) and government have made clear. Although Chairman Xi Jinping has not given any explanation, the replacement of the top two generals of the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) and the disappearance of Foreign Minister Qin Gang follow a well-worn pattern of corruption charges in China. Qin's last public appearance was on 25 June, and Xi officially removed him from office by a decree signed on 25 July.

Qin, a Xi loyalist and rising star who previously served as ambassador to the USA, is rumoured to have had a romantic affair and love child with Phoenix TV presenter Fu Xiaotian, who has also disappeared. The married Qin had only taken up the foreign ministerial post in December 2022. The Foreign Ministry website now lists Wang as head diplomat, after he was recalled to the post he had held from 2013-22.

With just 207 days in office, «wolf warrior» Qin was China's shortest-serving foreign minister. Chinese people are just as interested in Qin's fate as the rest of the world, as searches for «Qin Gang» on the Baidu search engine exploded 5,000 per cent in just one week in mid-July! Perhaps of greater concern than Qin's fate is massive upheaval within the PLARF, a force responsible for China's nuclear-missile arsenal. In the most serious purge of the PLA in a decade, its commander General Li Yuchao and political commissar General Liu Guangbin were removed from their posts, after being absent from public view for several months.

Eyebrows were raised when General Li was anomalously absent from a promotion ceremony chaired by Xi in late June. As well as controlling conventional and nuclear-tipped missiles, the PLARF would also play a key role in any invasion of Taiwan. The fact that he was appointed to oversee China's nuclear arsenal,