China’s 18 army corps have been reorganized into 13 army corps, Hong Kong-based military analyst Leung Kwok-leung (梁國樑) said.
The veteran journalist yesterday said that the 13 new army corps of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will also use new numeric designations that start from 71.
The PLA has had 70 army corps in its history and the new numbers are simply an extension of that tradition, he said.
According to his information, the new 71st, 72nd and 73rd army corps will be placed under the Eastern Theater Command, the 74th and 75th under the Southern Theater Command, and the 76th and 77th corps under the Western Theater Command, he said.
The remaining are to be equally divided between the Northern Theater Command and the Central Theater Command, he said.
Sources have said that the PLA’s 15th airborne army is likely to be upgraded as the new 84th Airborne Army Corps, an indication that China is trying to improve its airborne forces, Leung said.
He said he expects the new 84th Airborne Army Corps to include an airborne assault group similar to that of the US 101st Airborne Division.
In related news, a military Web site run by Beijing’s Global Times yesterday reported that the new vice head of the 76th Army Corps visited a commemoration event for the Red Army in Gansu Province days ago.
The report is the first time the name of the new 76th Army Corps has been officially mentioned.
In developments in Taiwan, the Ministry of National Defense on Sunday said that the annual Han Kuang exercises will begin on May 25, and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been invited to watch the drills.
Ministry spokesman Major General Chen Chung-chi (陳中吉) said the invitation was delivered to the Presidential Office, but the ministry has not yet received a response.
Several media reports on Sunday said that in preparation for the war games the ministry would conduct drills on May 9 and May 16 in which F-16s will fire AGM-65 Maverick missiles over the Penghu Islands.
However, Chen would not comment on the reports, saying only that “everything is being carefully planned based on our original plans.”
As usual there are to be two stages to the Han Kuang exercises, one focused on computer-simulations and the other centered on live-fire drills.
This year’s exercises will be conducted under the scenario of a PLA deployment in 2025 and include F-35 jets as a parameter in the computerized war games to simulate combat tactics and strategies, ministry officials said.
Live-fire drills will be carried out in Penghu on May 25, with the army, navy and air force participating.
There had been speculation in February that the ministry would forgo live-fire drills in this year’s war games, delaying them until next year, because the ministry has been adjusting the nation’s defense strategies to meet President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) goal of overhauling the military and national defenses.
This will be the 33rd year that the ministry has organized the Han Kuang’s exercises, but the first time that they will be held in May. The drills have traditionally been staged in August.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching