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Xi Jinping picks war games over military parade for Chinese army’s 90th birthday bash
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China’s biggest annual war games, at Asia’s largest military training base, will have a special guest on August 1 to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Sources close to the PLA, the world’s largest army, have told the South China Morning Post that President Xi Jinping will make his first known visit to the Zhurihe Combined Tactics Training Base, 400km northwest of Beijing in Inner Mongolia, to observe war games involving cyberwarfare, special troops, army aviation and electronic countermeasures.
There had been speculation the anniversary would be marked by a parade in Beijing, but Xi, who as chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) has been pushing the PLA to modernise, will instead be guest of honour at Zhurihe to see how that effort is progressing.
“There will not be a military parade on Tiananmen Square in Beijing on August 1 this year as rumoured, but a full-scale, head-to-head military manoeuvre in Zhurihe to celebrate the army’s birthday,” a military insider told the Post, adding that Xi would observe the war games from the base’s command centre. He might also inspect the team that won the exercise.
The full-scale military manoeuvre will test the PLA’s capability to integrate and coordinate land forces, army aviation, the newly established rocket force, strategic support units and logistics between different troops, with more hi-tech weapons being displayed.”
The PLA has undergone a comprehensive overhaul since Xi took the helm in late 2012, with the aim of transforming it into a nimble and modern fighting force.
The reforms saw the army’s four former general headquarters dissolved and replaced by 15 new entities, including the Joint Staff Department, while the seven military commands were reshaped into five theatre commands. In September 2015, Xi announced 300,000 personnel would be shed by the PLA, cutting its size to 2 million troops.
“The war games this year were supposed to be the biggest ever to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the PLA, but developments on China’s borders, such as the current military stand-off between Chinese and Indian troops in the Himalayas and Pyongyang’s missile tests, may affect its scale,” the first source said.
Indian troops forced the halting of a Chinese road-building project in a disputed border area close to Bhutan in late June, with both sides sending about 3,000 soldiers to the area.
North Korea’s missile tests have seen the United States, Japan and South Korea push China to increase pressure on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programme.
“Security uncertainties have caused the PLA to raise its vigilance for war preparedness, so the army may not be able to deploy too many personnel and put too many resources into war games,” the source said.
Elite troops from different military commands have held large-scale war games at the 1,066 sq km Zhurihe base, almost the same as the land area of Hong Kong, every summer since 2012. The annual Stride manoeuvres see tens of thousands of troops fight each other as blue and red armies.
Read more
China’s biggest annual war games, at Asia’s largest military training base, will have a special guest on August 1 to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Sources close to the PLA, the world’s largest army, have told the South China Morning Post that President Xi Jinping will make his first known visit to the Zhurihe Combined Tactics Training Base, 400km northwest of Beijing in Inner Mongolia, to observe war games involving cyberwarfare, special troops, army aviation and electronic countermeasures.
There had been speculation the anniversary would be marked by a parade in Beijing, but Xi, who as chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) has been pushing the PLA to modernise, will instead be guest of honour at Zhurihe to see how that effort is progressing.
“There will not be a military parade on Tiananmen Square in Beijing on August 1 this year as rumoured, but a full-scale, head-to-head military manoeuvre in Zhurihe to celebrate the army’s birthday,” a military insider told the Post, adding that Xi would observe the war games from the base’s command centre. He might also inspect the team that won the exercise.
The full-scale military manoeuvre will test the PLA’s capability to integrate and coordinate land forces, army aviation, the newly established rocket force, strategic support units and logistics between different troops, with more hi-tech weapons being displayed.”
The PLA has undergone a comprehensive overhaul since Xi took the helm in late 2012, with the aim of transforming it into a nimble and modern fighting force.
The reforms saw the army’s four former general headquarters dissolved and replaced by 15 new entities, including the Joint Staff Department, while the seven military commands were reshaped into five theatre commands. In September 2015, Xi announced 300,000 personnel would be shed by the PLA, cutting its size to 2 million troops.
“The war games this year were supposed to be the biggest ever to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the PLA, but developments on China’s borders, such as the current military stand-off between Chinese and Indian troops in the Himalayas and Pyongyang’s missile tests, may affect its scale,” the first source said.
Indian troops forced the halting of a Chinese road-building project in a disputed border area close to Bhutan in late June, with both sides sending about 3,000 soldiers to the area.
North Korea’s missile tests have seen the United States, Japan and South Korea push China to increase pressure on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programme.
“Security uncertainties have caused the PLA to raise its vigilance for war preparedness, so the army may not be able to deploy too many personnel and put too many resources into war games,” the source said.
Elite troops from different military commands have held large-scale war games at the 1,066 sq km Zhurihe base, almost the same as the land area of Hong Kong, every summer since 2012. The annual Stride manoeuvres see tens of thousands of troops fight each other as blue and red armies.
