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11 months ago
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CHINESE president Xi Jinping has been accused of launching a “Stalin-like” purge following the disappearance of hundreds of officials.
Former foreign minister Qin Gang has been “tortured to death” following his unexplained removal, reports have claimed.
Alamy
AFP
EPAOther high-profile victims including former defence minister Li Shangfu have also been missing for months, with a number having apparently died.
But with China’s security levels having ramped up drastically, it’s virtually impossible to know what’s going on inside Beijing.
And as a result of the shocking number of disappearances Chinese officials, president Xi Jinping has been accused of overseeing something truly barbaric.
Much like Vladimir Putin’s fears of being betrayed by someone from within his inner circle, 70-year-old Xi appears to be acting on his own paranoia.
The removal of China’s foreign and defence ministers, Qin Gang and Li Shangfu, are the two most high-profile examples.
Both of them were loyalists to president Xi who were handpicked and elevated mere months before they went missing earlier this year.
After overseeing most of Xi’s interactions with foreign dignitaries between 2014 and 2018, Qin was named ambassador to Washington in July 2021 and foreign minister barely 18 months later.
But within six months, he vanished.
His last known appearance was on June 25 this year after holding meetings with the foreign ministers of Sri Lanka and Vietnam in Beijing.
Deputy Russian Foreign Minister, Andrey Rudenko, was also in northern China, but not just to see Qin, apparently.
According to people with access to top Chinese officials, Rudenko’s real mission was to inform president Xi that Qin had been compromised by western intelligence agencies.
Qin soon disappeared, with two of those people claiming that he died, either from suicide or torture, in late July in the military hospital in Beijing that treats China’s top leaders.
However, China’s propaganda system has strongly hinted that Qin’s affair with reporter Fu Xiaotian and their illegitimate American child are the reasons for his purge.
Fu flew to Beijing on what appeared to have been a government-chartered private jet in April – and has not been heard from since.
But according to several people with access to top officials, as reported by Politico, the real reason for Qin’s abrupt disappearance was his involvement with a more serious scandal.
Included was the defence minister and the generals who commanded China’s “rocket force,” which oversees the country’s nuclear weapons program.
The top commander of the rocket force, Li Yuchao, also disappeared alongside his deputy Liu Guangbin and former deputy Zhang Zhenzhong.
Furthermore, several other senior serving and former officers were detained.
Several of these former Xi acolytes apparently died in custody of unspecified illness, according to state media reports.
Not long after, it was the former defence ministers turn to suddenly go missing.
Two months after his disappearance, Li Shangfu was fired in late October.
The day before the strange announcement, however, an eerie report of Wang Shaojun’s death was revealed.
Apparently, the former commander of the Central Guard unit, which protects China’s top leaders and oversees Xi’s personal bodyguard, had died three months earlier from “ineffective medical treatment.”
Later that month, recently retired prime minister — No. 2 in the Communist hierarchy — Li Keqiang was pronounced dead.
Xi’s predecessor had supposedly died of a heart attack in a swimming pool in Shanghai.
And following his death, Xi ordered an ban on any public mourning for his former rival.
In China, “heart attack in a swimming pool” has the same connotation that “falling out of a window” does in Russia for officials who anger or offend Putin.
Since his reign began in 2012, Xi’s endless purges have removed countless officials.
Hundreds of senior officers in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and thousands of top Party officials have been arrested, disappeared or “suicided”.
The latter of which sees an individual driven to commit suicide or killed in circumstances made to look like they’ve taken their own life.
The majority of those casualties are now from within Beijing’s inner circle.
It’s been reported that appearing “too westernised” instantly points towards corruption.
One senior Chinese finance official told Politico that he could no longer attend an upcoming event outside China and was unable to speak on the phone.
An associate of this official said he was currently being investigated for being “too close to America” and “possibly a spy.”
Based off this and recent events, appearing to engage too eagerly with foreigners brings inevitable consequences.
AFP
Wang Shaojun’s death was announced three months after he’d gone missing
English (US)