2023 Issue 37

The PRC Defense Minister, General Li Shangfu, was last seen in public on August 29 giving a keynote address at the China-Africa Peace and Security Forum.  Rumors of his disappearance started swirling last week when U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel suggested on Twitter that General Li had been purged. 

The story broke this week in the Financial Times and Washington Post that Li is under investigation for corruption, this follows on the heels of the disappearance and removal of the PRC Foreign Minister and the entire leadership of the PRC’s nuclear forces.

The Economist’s Drum Tower podcast and the New York Times offer two looks at the PRC’s information warfare campaigns, one planned for months against Japan, with the other developed rapidly against the United States to take advantage of the Maui wildfires.

Finally, it is becoming increasingly clear that the PRC economy will not become the world’s largest which should cause investors, business leaders, and politicians around the world to rethink the assumptions they have made over the past two decades.