Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) formally reorganized the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) under five “battle zones,” securing the last major piece expected in China’s biggest military overhaul in decades.
Xi, who also serves as commander-in-chief, presided over a ceremony at the Ministry of National Defense in Beijing on Monday to formally convey banners to generals in charge of the new zones, Xinhua news agency said.
The areas — northern, southern, eastern, western and central — replace seven military regions and unify the branches under a single command structure for the first time. The new commanders and political commissars for the five zones were also announced, Xinhua said.
Photo: AP
The regional rezoning was the last major component of a shakeup first floated by Xi more than two years ago and intended to make the world’s largest army better equipped to project force beyond the country’s borders. The overhaul comes at a time when China has become more assertive about its territorial claims over the East China Sea and South China Sea, raising tension with its neighbors and the US.
“It is designed to streamline command-and-control functions and organizationally restructure the PLA into a military better able to wage war in the information age and make it more accountable to the party,” said Andrew Scobell, a senior political scientist at RAND Corp. “It remains to be seen how successful the reforms will be and how long the reorganization will take.”
The creation of the battle zones “marks a strategic decision made by the party central leadership and the Central Military Commission with the aim of realizing the Chinese dream and the strong-army dream,” Xi said, according to Xinhua.
“All battle zones must unwaveringly listen to the party’s direction, insist upon the party’s absolute leadership,” Xi said.
Defense ministry spokesman Yang Yujun (楊宇軍) said in a separate statement posted online that China would maintain its “defensive national defence policy” and that the country’s development and foreign policy would be unchanged
Bloomberg first reported details of the plan in September last year, days before Xi announced the reorganization during a parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II.
The plan calls for reducing the 2.3 million-member PLA by 300,000 and redefining missions and responsibilities among the military branches, with the goal of building a fighting force that “can win modern wars.”
“The reforms will also increase CCP [Chinese Communist Party] control over the military, and Xi Jinping’s personal control as chairman of the Central Military Commission,” said Phillip Saunders, director of the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense University in Washington. “The reform is bigger than I expected, and will be disruptive to the PLA until it is fully implemented, probably by 2020.”
The overhaul has been rolled out in recent months, including Xi’s announcement on Sept. 3 last year of the overhaul and troop reduction and the establishment on Nov. 26 of a joint military command that brought all branches of the armed forces under one roof.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS