China dismisses Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Sun Weidong
Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong’s sudden dismissal comes amid a wave of removals amid anticorruption campaign.
Senior Chinese diplomat Sun Weidong has been removed from his post as vice minister of foreign affairs, in the latest case of a high-ranking official being removed from office by Beijing.
The Ministry of Human Resources announced the news in a brief post on its website on Tuesday, citing a decision of the State Council, the highest body of state power in China.
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The post did not say why or when Sun had been removed, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website shows his last public engagements were meetings with the ambassadors of Brunei and Malaysia to China on March 13.
Two days earlier, Sun had met Pakistan’s ambassador to China to discuss bilateral cooperation, according to a post on diplomat Khalil Hashmi’s X account.
Dismissals of this kind in the Chinese government can indicate high-level disciplinary action and are often followed by news of an investigation. It is also possible, however, that Sun could be moved to another role, or that he might be retiring from a public role despite his relatively young age.
Sun’s notice included the removal of another official, An Lusheng, from his post as deputy director of the National Railway Administration.
Reshuffling of officials in China often raises eyebrows because of the country’s long-running anticorruption campaign.
Since coming to power in 2013, President Xi Jinping has carried out a campaign targeting “tigers and flies”, meaning high- and low-ranking officials.
Last year, China investigated more than one million corruption cases and disciplined 938,000 people, according to its Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and National Supervisory Commission.
The list of cases involving disciplinary action included 69 provincial or ministerial-level officials, 4,155 bureau-level officials, 35,000 county-level officials, and 125,000 township-level officials, according to the commission’s year-end report.
Senior Chinese military officials have also been caught up in Xi’s anticorruption campaign sweeps.
