Chinese navy’s combat software guru Zhao Xiaozhe disappears from academy website

The vice-admiral is the latest prominent expert to be removed from the prestigious national engineering institution’s membership list

Zhao was reportedly absent from a high-level Communist Party study session on artificial intelligence chaired by President Xi Jinping in April last year, with his deputy attending instead.

His profile has also been removed from the academy’s separate online museum of academicians.

Zhao was elected to the academy in 2011 while at the Dalian Naval Academy, where he was a professor and doctoral supervisor. He also served as director of its Combat Software and Simulation Research Institute.