China has removed Sun Weidong from his position as vice minister of foreign affairs, with the State Council (China's highest state administrative body) announcing the dismissal in a brief notice that gave no reason for the decision. Sun's last recorded public engagements were meetings with ambassadors from Brunei, Malaysia, and Pakistan in mid-March, and dismissals of this kind in the Chinese system typically precede a formal corruption investigation. The move is the latest in President Xi Jinping's long-running anticorruption drive, which last year alone saw more than one million cases investigated and disciplinary action taken against nearly a million officials across all levels of government.