Exclusive | Xi Jinping picks war games over military parade for Chinese army’s 90th birthday bash
PLA to pit its skills against mock ‘Western forces’ at Asia’s biggest training base, but winning isn’t guaranteed
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.”
