China’s military names new commander for troubled Xinjiang region

Lieutenant General Wang Haijiang, 57, was previously in charge of Tibet and has headed an elite PLA unit
He will be responsible for border areas where Beijing is concerned about terror threats, as well as the disputed frontier with India

Xinjiang

Liu Zhen

Published: 9:30pm, 5 Aug 2021

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China has appointed a new military commander to oversee its troubled far western Xinjiang region, where security is tight amid a crackdown that Beijing says is needed to prevent terrorism.

Lieutenant General Wang Haijiang, 57, will also be responsible for part of China’s disputed border with India as commander of the Xinjiang military region, at a time of heightened tensions between the two neighbours.

The move was confirmed in a statement on the military region’s official WeChat social media account, which named Wang as the commander and said he had paid tribute to former People’s Liberation Army senior colonels at a retirement ceremony on Monday.

Wang is the former commander of the Tibet military region and was seen attending an event in Xinjiang in April, but his role was not clear at the time. His replacement in Tibet, Lieutenant General Wang Kai, was announced the same month.

Wang Haijiang will work with Lieutenant General Yang Cheng, who will be his second-in-command as political commissar of the Xinjiang military region.

PLA troops take part in an exercise at the Pamir Mountains in Kashgar, Xinjiang in January. Photo: AFP

The region sits under the PLA’s Western Theatre Command – responsible for the vast border region with Central Asian countries including Afghanistan, where China is concerned about security and the threat of terrorism, as well as the western section of its border with India.

PLA troops from the Xinjiang region are still engaged in a confrontation with Indian soldiers high in the Karakoram mountains after the two sides had their most deadly border clash in decades in June last year, in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh.

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It will be familiar territory for Wang Haijiang – before Tibet, he was deputy commander of the southern part of Xinjiang, covering the Indian border region.

He was earlier commended in official military newspaper PLA Daily for his contribution in Tibet in 2017, heading a 10-month road construction project in the Himalayas at an altitude of 4,000 metres in extreme weather. PLA road-building in the Doklam Plateau region of Tibet – a trijunction between China, Bhutan and India – triggered another serious military confrontation between Chinese and Indian troops, in the summer of 2017.

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The appointment also comes amid Beijing’s ongoing crackdown in Xinjiang, which it says is aimed at fighting terrorism and religious extremism. China faces growing international criticism and pressure over its policies in the region and alleged human rights abuses against Uygurs and other Muslim minorities – claims that Beijing denies.

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Wang joined the PLA in 1977, and was awarded a first-class honour for bravery in combat during the border war with Vietnam in the 1980s. He has also served in one of the PLA’s elite units, the 61st division of the former 21st Group Army.

Zhou Chenming, a military analyst in Beijing, said Wang was equipped to take on the difficult Xinjiang role given his experience, including as a former commander of the elite unit. “The 61st division is one of the three top units, they’re all heavily armed and they are used as models for other combat troops in the PLA to learn from,” he said.

Additional reporting by Minnie Chan

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