This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Bachelor with my colleague and friend Gordon Chang at Gordon G. Chang.

We welcome Rick Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center

to help us understand very conflicting reports from the People's Liberation Army headed by a defense minister who keeps

changing his name or his mission or his confidence in the regime or the regime's confidence

in him because yet another defense minister has fallen on a corruption charge.

When I say yet another, Reuters, China defense minister, Dong John's fate, unclear as

corruption probe sparks differing account.

Gordon, didn't this same headline run last December, as I recall, it was a previous defense minister.

So they're repeating themselves.

What is this?

Eleven months later?

Is this a pattern that you've seen over the years, or is this just bad luck twice in a row by Xi Jinping?

I think it's a pattern, John.

General Li Shang Fu, the previous defense minister, was appointed

in March of last year. He disappeared in August of last year and was not formally replaced

until December of last year with Admiral Dong Jun. Now there are reports that Admiral Dong Jun is also under investigation.

We don't know if those reports are true, but we know the person who promoted Admiral

Dong Jun is himself now under investigation, which means that probably the new defense

minister is also being investigated. Rick, as I recall, Dong Jun and the initial reports about him, he's an admiral in the PLA

Navy, very familiar with the South China Sea and the fortified islands.

That recommended him for the post.

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