China’s defence chiefs send teams to check up on military training
Inspectors’ mission to ensure methods are up to standard, according to PLA’s mouthpiece
The Central Military Commission (CMC) kicked off a new round of training assessments for the People’s Liberation Army this week, a move military analysts said was to gain an overall view of standards after the military’s recent organisational shake-up.
The CMC, which is chaired by President Xi Jinping, sent the first batch of teams to five theatre commands and other service troops on Tuesday, the miliary mouthpiece PLA Daily reported on Wednesday.
The report said the inspectors were chosen from specialist departments and military training institutes to make sure new methods were up to standard.
The teams are temporary ones and under the Training Management Department, which is one of 15 new organisations all directly under the CMC.
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Zeng Zhiping, a military law expert at the Nanchang Institute of Technology in Jiangxi province, said the assessments seemed to be another move by Xi to further consolidate his personal prestige after the massive overhaul in the army.
“Some military heavyweights – who fear they may get laid off and so are taking a wait-and-see approach – are unwilling to take action and properly train their troops,” Zeng said. “However, military training is the PLA’s core activity and it should be an indispensable daily routine.
“So it’s quite strange to set up an inspection team to check it, unless the leadership believed the army was lacking in its mission.”
The overhaul is aimed at turning the PLA away from an army-centric system and towards a Western-style joint command, in which the army, navy and air force are equally represented, as well as “ready to fight and win wars”.
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Last week, the CMC also announced it had for the first time installed anti-corruption inspection units in its newly restructured departments and theatre commands.
Similar inspection units have been set up at the provincial level by relevant graft watchdogs.
The graft inspectors completed two days of training in Beijing last week and were expected to be divided into 10 groups and fan out to theatre commands and other departments under the CMC, according to an earlier report by the PLA Daily.
All the inspection units are under the Discipline Inspection Commission, which is one of the 15 departments set up in January after the CMC disbanded its four general headquarters.
The inspection system is seen as an indication of Xi’s determination to root out deeply ingrained corruption in the army.
