BEIJING, Dec 29 (INP): Chinese military played a major role in promoting international relations, getting inspirations from President Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era.

“The Chinese military has made pioneering efforts in promoting international military cooperation and nailed another high-profile year, said spokesperson of the Chinese Defence Ministry senior colonel Wu Qian, while highlighting China’s military diplomacy at a regular news briefing.

According to the spokesperson, in the past year, China expanded our network of friends and built a new pattern of international military cooperation that is all-dimensional, wide-ranging and multi-tiered. In the past year, we have conducted more realistic joint training exercises with foreign militaries, which made more contributions to the growth of combat capabilities of our troops.

We appeared more frequently on international stages in 2018 and the voice of PLA has been louder in bilateral and multilateral settings. In the past year, PLA’s influence has also been rising, providing public security goods all around the world.

In the past decade, the PLA Navy Escort Task Groups (ETG), bearing the trust from the Party and our people in mind, were committed to conducting vessel protection missions under the law and provisions, innovating new working methods, inspiring the officials and soldiers, and successfully completed the vessel protection missions.

In the past decade, a total of 31 ETGs including 26,000 service members escorted over 6600 Chinese and foreign ships, rescued and assisted over 70 ships in distress and ensured absolute security of escorted ships and service members themselves.

Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, the military has been making efforts to build an informationalized equipment system. We emphasize innovation and sustainable development.

We follow the overall plan and focus on key equipment. We have made major achievements in equipment build-up and blazed a path of Chinese characteristics in weapon and equipment development. As for the type 15 light-weight tank you mentioned, according to my information, it has been equipped to our troops.”

China held around 40 joint military exercises with over 30 foreign countries in 2018. Through these exercises, Chinese and foreign militaries built friendship and trust and improved military build-up and training.

There are three features of it. first, Chinese military ran exercises at more levels, including military skills training of individual soldiers, mixed team training exercises at tactical level and joint command exercises at strategic and operational level. I should say we had in-depth and multi-tiered exchanges with foreign militaries.

Second, Chinese military conducted exercises with more realistic contexts, including both non-traditional security subjects like HADR and traditional security subjects. I should say these are all very combat-oriented.

Third, Chinese military built better mechanisms of exercises. We value the effectiveness of each exercise. Meanwhile, we made progress in regularizing joint exercises with foreign countries, which paved the way for conducting high-quality, regular and standardized exercises in the future.

INP/J/AJ