CNN
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China on Sunday appointed a US-sanctioned normal as its new protection minister.
The nation’s rubber-stamp legislature unanimously confirmed the appointment of Common Li Shangfu, a veteran of the Folks’s Liberation Military’s modernization drive, throughout a session on Sunday.
Specialists mentioned the appointment can be intently watched by Washington given Li’s background, despite the fact that the publish is considered as largely diplomatic and ceremonial.
In 2018, the administration of former US President Donald Trump sanctioned Li and China’s Tools Growth Division – which he was accountable for on the time – for buying Russian weapons, together with a Su-35 fight plane and a S-400 surface-to-air missile system.
His appointment was one in every of a collection confirmed by China’s Nationwide Folks’s Congress throughout its Sunday sitting. Different senior appointments included 4 new vice premiers – Ding Xuexiang, He Lifeng, Zhang Guoqing, and Liu Guozhong.
Following their nomination by the brand new premier Li Qiang, all 4 will function vice premiers on the State Council, the physique chargeable for reviving China’s economic system after three years of strict zero-Covid restrictions.
The appointment of Li Shangfu as protection minister comes at a time of more and more strained relations between Beijing and Washington.
Protection specialists informed Reuters that his appointment probably mirrored a reward for his work in modernizing China’s navy.
In 2016, Li was named deputy commander of the PLA’s then-new Strategic Assist Power, an elite physique tasked with accelerating the event of China’s area and cyber warfare capabilities. He was then appointed head of the Tools Growth Division of the Central Navy Fee (CMC), China’s governing protection physique, headed by the nation’s chief Xi Jinping, Reuters reported.
Protection specialists mentioned Li’s historical past as a technocrat and aerospace engineer who labored in China’s satellite tv for pc program would play a key half in his new function.
“The operational and technological background of the following Chinese language protection minister is particularly pertinent provided that the PLA goals to turn out to be a world-class navy by 2049,” James Char from Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam College of Worldwide Research informed Reuters.
“I feel he has been elevated to this place as a result of he’s delivered for Xi Jinping in key areas of modernisation,” Singapore-based safety analyst Alexander Neill from Hawaii’s Pacific Discussion board think-tank informed Reuters.
“That is somebody who should maintain their very own in entrance of a world viewers.”