Sat, Jan 06, 2024 page8

• Assessing Beijing’s new defense minister

  • By Lin Ying-yu 林穎佑
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  Late last month, former Chinese navy commander Dong Jun (董軍) was appointed as the new defense minister after the post had been left vacant for some time. It is nigh impossible for the outside world to grasp the internal changes in China’s personnel, so we have little way of knowing the reason behind these personnel changes: We can only speculate on the reasons for this change.

  Dong, from Yantai in China’s Shandong Province, was born in 1961 and graduated from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Dalian Naval Academy. He served as the director of training at the PLA Navy Command and deputy chief of staff of the North Sea Fleet. After being promoted to rear admiral in 2012, he became deputy commander of the East Sea Fleet in 2013, and in 2014 he became the deputy chief of staff of the navy.

  Dong was promoted to deputy commander of the Southern Theater Command in 2017, where he was promoted to vice admiral in 2018. After experience in the command, he returned to the navy as the deputy commander in March 2021, later becoming the commander of the Chinese navy in August the same year. He was promoted to admiral in the next month.

  In terms of his career, the navy has a diplomatic mission, but Dong’s appointment as China’s defense minister might be related to his experience in the North, the East and the South Sea fleets. From air and sea surveillance to specific ghost operations, Beijing’s frequent confrontations with other countries’ forces in the sea and airspace around China would be central during exchanges with foreign militaries.

  Compared with his predecessor Li Shangfu (李尚福), who has a background in aerospace research, Dong, who used to serve in China’s three major theater commands and the navy, might have served mainly in the government’s military units. However, the duties of China’s defense minister today are no longer in war planning, arms building, troop deployment and military training, but in foreign military exchanges, so his experience might be more suited to the job. This is especially the case at a time when China and the US are gradually resuming military dialogue and the number of diplomatic exchanges with foreign militaries is also bound to increase, which is a possible reason for Dong being asked to step into this role now.

  The third aspect is the possible missions that Dong would be asked to participate in. Dong served as the Chinese executive director of a joint military exercise between China and Russia in 2015, and he has had close interactions with the Russian military. In 2020, he served as the chief director of the first Sea Guardian joint naval exercise between China and Pakistan. He might even have been involved in the US-China theater dialogues until 2021. He has a wealth of experience in foreign military exchanges.

  In addition to the geostrategic need to cooperate with Pakistan as a counterbalance in South Asia, it is even more important that China has military interaction and exchanges with Russia, a country with rich combat experience from the Russian-Ukrainian war. Plus, for the PLA, there is a strong Russian element in terms of the origin of equipment and in the Chinese command and control system. The PLA’s most urgent task in the short term must be how to maintain interactions with Moscow, and learn the lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to review PLA combat power after its military reform. These might be important missions for Dong in future military exchanges.

  Lin Ying-yu is an assistant professor in Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies.

  Translated by Eddy Chang
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