What the hell is going on. Too many scientists and engineers are dying in China in mysterious ways and too early. Even if they die, why would their names be scrapped?
Is Xi Jinping taking out CIA spies inside China?
I dont think US would be doing any assassination inside China, cause China can hit right back. So, the only one who can do this is the govr itself.
Depending on the type of institutions list, it's pretty normal to remove profiles of people who have passed away, since having a profile implies the person can be contacted. So that, in and of itself, does not mean much.
It also doesn't make sense for Chinese counter intelligence to straight up assassinate internal spies. It'd make much more sense to arrest them, interrogate them, and put them on trial. Why wouldn't you want to publicly shame traitors?
So that leaves three possibilities. First, foreign intelligence forces are assassinating top Chinese scientists & engineers and stealing their secrets. This isn't very likely because China has excellent surveillance capabilities and presumably strong internal counter intelligence, so we'd expect some to have been caught by now - but it's not impossible, I suppose, if the assassins are highly competent.
Second, these are internal spies who were in the process of being investigated (but not convicted), and because they had highly sensitive information, they either committed suicide or were removed by their foreign handlers. This would not result in a trial because of the lack of certainty, and there would also be incentive to keep it quiet.
Third, it's nothing, and just reflects the large number of Chinese scientists & engineers there are and possibly their over working habits.