Cables From The Diplomatic Frontlines - Reader Q&A on latest from China: missing Minister of Defense and worries of a diversionary conflict.

Summer of discontent with Chinese characteristics.

• The United States is entering the last quarter of the year in a pretty decent shape: unemployment is low, inflation abates, soft landing seems extremely plausible, growth is strong (at least in comparison to peer nations) and real wages have gone up - especially for the bottom 80% of the income ladder.

• Same cannot be said of our main adversary - China’s growth has slowed, at 21% its youth unemployment is so high that (as of this summer) government stopped publishing official stats, real-estate driven debt crisis isn’t anywhere close to being solved, and when all of this was combined with investor fear and exodus (due to geopolitical risks, supply-chain/investment divestments by large multinationals, US sanctions on advanced tech companies & chips, and increasingly heavy-handed central government cracking down on entrepreneurs) China’s national currency, Yuan, naturally fell in value - causing major headaches and bringing back flashbacks of 2015 (when Beijing had to spend more than a trillion $ from its foreign currency reserves in order to stop and reverse the Yuan).

• But that is not all - key figures of the Chinese government - like the foreign Minister Qin Gang and the Defense Minister General Li Shangfu have suddenly gone missing.

• The former was replaced by Wang Yi, and it is presumed (by the US intel sources) that Li Shangfu will also be replaced pretty soon (and there are certainly some reports that he is being investigated for corruption).

• The situation in Beijing is clearly very tense - and there is in fact a lot for the Chinese leadership to worry about.

• That these changes would cause major concerns in external observers was always a given, but there are also two commonly emailed questions by readers that deserve discussion: 1) What (if anything) can we make of Defense Minister Li Shangfu’s sudden disappearance, and 2) Is there a possibility that Beijing may engage in acts of external aggression to distract from an internal turmoil?