China has just appointed a new Defense Minister at Friday 6:40pm -- Navy Admiral Dong Jun, 62.
Quick thoughts on possible significance for China's strategic focus, personnel tradition, and military's anti-corruption reshuffling. /1
This is in line with expectation from two new personnel promotions earlier this week -- elevation of Wang Wenquan (王文全) and Hu Zhongming (胡中明) to General on Christmas Day.
Wang is political commissar for PLA's Southern Theater Command, and Hu is PLA Navy commander. /2
So new Defense Minister Dong Jun's appointment, plus the elevation of this new crop of top military officers with Navy and South China Sea experience is a sign of China seeing South China Sea as a new priority area of geopolitical contestation between China and the US. /3
Recall U.S. National Security Advisor @JakeSullivan46's quote: "intense competition requires intense diplomacy".
Well, China just promoted 2 new generals who can intensely compete for naval supremacy in SCS, & named a new DefMin from Navy to pursue intense military diplomacy./4
Domestically, on personnel tradition, choosing Dong Jun as new Defense Minister also follows existing tradition of appointing non-Army generals to lead China's military diplomacy. /5
reuters.com/world/china/us…
China has a tradition of appointing generals from non-Army backgrounds to the Defense Minister-ship (to deal with foreigners).
Heads of relatively technical agencies such as the PLA Rocket Forces and the General Armament Dept (that does procurement) are the usual favorites. /6
The fact that China forgoes these two pools and appoints someone from Navy instead, may be a sign that there are ongoing purges or investigations at the RF and General Armament Dept (purges that make elevating someone from those portfolios more politically problematic). /7
Note that this isn't a surprise to some.
2 days ago, Hong Kong's Singtao Daily, which is known for producing Chinese politics scoops, already named Admiral Dong Jun as a likely candidate for DM, with Friday Dec 29 as likely date of formal appointment. /8
std.stheadline.com/realtime/artic…
A bit more on Dong Jun: Defense Ministers usually have 3 jobs,
- Central Military Commission member
- State Councilor
- Def Min
Dong Jun only gets 1 so far, that's Defense Minister, making him relatively lighter-weight DefMin for now. /9
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