How China’s military is girding for battle, and what it means for neighbours
People’s Liberation Army is taking part in more exercises in a wider range of environments
Wei Shiji “died instantly” while trying to defuse a landmine in a dense forest in China’s Fujian province this month, while two comrades, Li Shoushun and Liu Shangdong, “survived the war”.
The three young men were not playing a computer game, but soldiers with a special People’s Liberation Army (PLA) brigade undergoing combat training as China’s military ramps up the quantity and quality of its exercises.
Li hid in a river to evade a surveillance drone, while Liu hit 24 targets after fixing his broken rifle in a matter of minutes, the army mouthpiece PLA Daily said in a January 11 report on the training, designed to boost the soldiers’ fighting skills and spirit.
It said commanders of the brigade, part of the PLA’s Guangdong-based 74th Group Army, were ordered to rectify seven problems identified during the exercise that would have made it less effective in a real war.
The PLA has stepped up its training efforts since President Xi Jinping became Communist Party general secretary and chairman of its Central Military Commission (CMC) in late 2012, in line with his plan to turn it into a modern fighting force capable of conducting long-range power-projection operations.
In 2013, the army and paramilitary police planned nearly 40 training exercises, China News Service reported.
But in the past two years, the PLA alone conducted at least 45 exercises a year, according to data complied by the South China Morning Post, and it staged them in more complex and harsher conditions on land, at sea and in the air.