Chinese border troops likely to benefit from new rules to end unfair treatment
- Overhaul of rules is also likely to see forces in areas such as the Indian border given more advanced weapons
- Previously forces along Taiwan Strait and South China Sea had been favoured as a result of political infighting
A commentary published on Sunday by PLA Daily, the mouthpiece of China’s military, said the new regulations were aimed at maintaining officers’ “basic living benefits” and establishing a better management system for career development.
President Xi Jinping, who also chairs the all-powerful Central Military Commission, introduced the “Provisional Regulations on the Movement of Active Military Officers” on the first day of this year, along with a series of related rules covering areas such as selection, training and promotion.
Military observers said the reforms might help eliminate long-standing problems that meant officers stationed in certain areas, such as the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, were given more favourable treatment and better equipment compared with those in remote parts of the country.
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“There are some unfair traditions and discriminatory legacies left over from political struggles in previous decades,” Macau-based military observer Antony Wong Tong said, referring to the different treatment officials and officers in the Central, Eastern and Southeast military areas had received.