• AFP
• 12:00AM January 6, 2018
• Save
• • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on email
  • Share more...
• 52

Mr Xi’s exhortation to the world’s largest fighting force, parts of which were revealed only yesterday, came during a rare address by the leader to the country’s entire military.

Mr Xi cemented his status as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong during the October Communist Party ­national congress, and this week’s rhetoric and images of massed military are designed to back up his strongman image.

China’s military should “neither fear hardship nor death”, Mr Xi told thousands of troops during an inspection visit on Wednesday to the People’s Liberation Army’s Central Theatre Command in northern Hebei province, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Mr Xi also called for the once-backward force whose rapid modernisation has raised alarm in Asia and Washington to continue upgrading. He urged the PLA to step up research into hi-tech means of warfare and engage in “real combat training”.

“Create an elite and powerful force that is always ready for the fight, capable of combat and sure to win in order to fulfil the tasks bestowed by the party and the people in the new era.”

As head of the party’s Central Military Commission, Mr Xi is commander-in-chief of China’s more than two-million-strong armed forces. Xinhua called Mr Xi’s address to the troops “the first time for the commission to hold a mobilisation meeting for the whole armed forces”. Other media reports said thousands of troops elsewhere in the country assembled at their installations to hear his speech.

Since taking office in 2012, Mr Xi has pushed for a muscular China, including calls in October to develop a “world-class” army by 2050. China’s neighbours have watched warily as the PLA has upgraded its arsenal with sophisticated weaponry and sought to create a more effective and professional fighting force.

Analysts say Mr Xi is very unlikely to risk putting China’s still-untested new prowess into an outright military confrontation.

Yet concerns have grown as Beijing has imposed increasingly assertive claims to vast expanses of the contested South China Sea, while engaging in confrontations with Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea, and with India over Himalayan regions.

AFP