[Originally a Twitter thread.]
Why isn’t Defense Minister Dong Jun a member of the Central Military Commission, like his predecessors? I don’t know but here’s my speculation:
Dong is a different type of appointee than most ministers of defense. For at least the past 20 years, it’s probably been something of a sinecure. Ministers took office at the end of long careers composed of more important roles in the PLA. Some of the old Ministers of Defense were not just members of the CMC, they were CMC Vice Chairmen and Politburo members. When Liang Guanglie was “only” a CMC member in 2008, it was a notable step down for the new minister.
Dong has also had a long and distinguished career, but he’d been promoted to PLAN commander relatively recently and hadn’t served out a full term. He’s also from the Navy rather than the Army, so for those two reasons Xi and the top brass may not consider him a PLA greybeard who is entitled or trusted to serve on the CMC as an end-of-career post.
If anything, I’m more puzzled by the fact that Dong isn’t a State Councilor. The MinDef being on the CMC has always been a little weird to me because their role is so much less important than everyone else’s. But I would think there’s some bureaucratic utility in having them serve as a State Councilor, in order to smooth some bureaucratic processes within the state system when they’re dealing with issues like mobilization, requisition of civilian resources, legal matters, and maybe to give them a little protocol boost when conducting foreign engagements.
The State Council seems disordered in general right now - Wang Yi is a Politburo member and a Minister… but not a State Councilor. Strange!
IMO the Minister of Defense has long been an unacceptable interlocutor for SECDEF because they’re not in the chain of command and they lead a hollow ministry with no independent institutional influence. But at least previous ministers have been in the room where it happens. With Dong left off the CMC for now, the misalignment between SECDEF and his counterpart has become even more egregious.