*BEIJING:* President Xi Jinping presided over the Chinese navy’slargest-ever military display on Thursday, state media reported, thecountry’s latest show of force in the South China Sea.
State broadcaster China Central Television showed footage of Xi boardingthe destroyer Changsha before sailing to an unspecified location in theSouth China Sea and watching the procession, which involved more than10,000 naval officers, 76 fighter jets, and a flotilla of 48 warships andsubmarines.
Xi told the assembled troops that China’s need for a world-leading navalforce “has never been more pressing than today” and urged them to devotetheir unswerving loyalty to the party, before watching through binocularsfour J-15 fighter jets take off from the Liaoning, China’s sole operationalaircraft carrier.
He said the People’s Liberation Army should work to develop its navalforces, build up modern maritime combat system and strengthen itscapability in diversified military missions.
China’s armed forces, the world’s largest, are in the midst of an ambitiousmodernisation program, which includes investment in technology and newequipment such as stealth fighters and aircraft carriers, as well as cutsto troop numbers.
Also on Thursday, China announced it would hold live-fire military drillsin the Taiwan Straits on April 18.
Xi, who as chairman of the Central Military Commission is also the army’scommander-in-chief, has shown a penchant for putting on eye-catchingdisplays of military might, including a large-scale parade of tanks andmissiles through the center of Beijing in 2015, and another in the remoteZhurihe training base of Inner Mongolia in July.
The naval review comes as the USS Theodore Roosevelt, leading a carrierstrike group, conducted what the US military called routine training in thedisputed South China Sea on Tuesday. – Agencies