BEIJING: China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the world’s largest army,has published an officially approved outline for military training as partof its efforts to emerge as a world-class force.
The Central Military Commission headed by President Xi Jinpinglink> has approved theoutline for military training.
Since he took over power in 2013 emerging as China’s most powerful leaderin recent decades, 64-year-old Xi has been firmly advocating live firedrills in real-time war conditions to enhance the 2.3 million strongmilitary to win wars.
As a result, the PLA army, navy and air force have been carrying outmassive exercises in Tibet as well as the disputed South China Sea andareas close to Taiwan.
Xi also carried out massive reform of PLA’s command structure and orderedthree lakh troops cut as part of efforts to revamp the military which hasan annual budget of over $140 billion, next only to that of US military.
Also over 40 top military officials including two former Vice Chief of theCMC were punished in the massive anti-graft campaign ordered by Xi, thelargest purge since the era of Mao Zedong founder of the ruling CommunistParty of China (CPC).
Xi also heads the party as general-secretary of the CPC, and the militarybesides the presidency.
Centring on building a strong army in the new era and building it into aworld-class force, the new training outline focuses on the PLA’s combatcapability, highlighting military training under combat conditions andjoint training.
It looks to establish “a system of training content and related mechanismsthat are more into combat and joint operations, as well as more scientificand normalised,” state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Moreover, the outline sets up a standard system covering personnel atdifferent levels and in different fields that meets the requirements ofmodern warfare, laying the basis for the PLA’s training, while setting asignificant rule for military training in the new era.
The latest revision to the outline is the PLA’s eighth overall remodellingof the system of the military training content since April 2013, said PLADaily, the official organ of the military.
The PLA will also develop new combat and support forces, increase militarystrength and speed up development of an intelligent military, to enableitself to shape its military posture, manage crises, and deter and win warsas per the orders of the once-in-a-five-year congress of held in Octoberlast.
It also endorsed a new five-year term for Xi.
The new training outline makes it a mission of the PLA that by 2035, themodernization of the country’s national defence and forces should becompleted, and that by the mid-21st century Chinese people’s armed forcesshould have been fully transformed into world-class forces, the report said.