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China’s technology minister has played a central role in the country’s efforts to become a technological superpower, and has not yet appeared in public for two months.
Important government gatherings, the ministry’s public records and the Financial Times review of the meetings showed that Minister of Industry and Information Technology Kim Zhuanglong has been absent since the end of December.
According to the ministry’s records, Kim had previously held meetings, or toured with Li Qiang, the second Chinese digital official.
There may be personal or other explanations, that is, Jin is absent from the public eye. But the expansion of Chinese officials, unexplained disappearances, historically suggests anti-corruption investigations have been conducted.
Four people familiar with the matter said they believed that gold was the subject of detectors related to grafts.
Since the president’s third term began in 2023, Kim will be the latest current cabinet member of Xi Jinping’s ruthless anti-corruption and discipline crusaders.
Despite Xi Jinping’s call for ongoing self-substitution to sustain the ruling Communist Party, experts and business leaders complain privately that anti-corruption drives have scared the country’s bureaucratic and paralyzed decision-making.
Last year, China’s anti-plant supervisor disciplinary action was 889,000 officials, a 46% increase from the previous year, the most in at least a decade.
Yeling Tan, a professor at the Blavatnik government school at Oxford University, said the anti-corruption campaign had unexpected consequences for decision-making.
“The focus on party discipline and partisan loyalty makes the entire system cold and leads to risk aversion,” she said. “Don’t be safer.”
Xi Jinping’s economic ambitions for advanced technologies have improved the position of technology and industry departments in recent years. The ministry oversees China’s industrial policies, including the formulation of artificial intelligence, semiconductors, telecommunications and electric vehicles.
Last year, Kim and Lee visited the top semiconductor groups such as NAURA and YMTC, which rely on Beijing, who are counting on overcoming the Western chip embargo, as well as laser maker HGTECH and the Center for Quantum Computing Research.
King stood out during his five-year chair of the five-year State Council manufacturer COMAC, where he was considered to direct the development of the C919, the first domestically produced passenger aircraft in China.
From there, he was promoted to deputy director of China’s Central Military Integration Office and then promoted to Minister of Industry and Technology in 2022 after his predecessor Xiao Yaqing was removed from office for an anti-corruption investigation.
People familiar with the matter say King may be unscathed from any investigation. The ministry’s website continues to identify him as minister and party secretary, which did not respond to requests for comment.
The last public event on Jun’s schedule was on December 27, when he hosted a meeting praising the new industrialization spirit of XI. FT’s review of videos and government statements confirmed that there was no Jin in the subsequent incidents, and deputies often proposed roles.
In early January, Kim missed a meeting of senior officials, and Xi Jinping stressed that corruption is the “bigest threat” to the party.
On February 5, he missed a parliamentary meeting or cabinet meeting to prepare reports on China’s upcoming economic growth goals and policy priorities.
Besides Wang Yi, the foreign minister who accepted foreign guests, Jin was the only minister absent from that meeting.
Jin was filled by Deputy Minister Xin Guobin on Tuesday in a place for Li Retinue during a visit to a research center under a Chinese-backed telecom group.
