China and Australia held 13th Sino-Australian defence strategic consultation; Jordanian General visits China; Ma Xiaotian describes Bangladesh as a ‘neighbor’ of China; Mongolia and China will deepen defence cooperation;
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    • China and Australia held 13th Sino-Australian defence strategic consultation on December 16-17 in Nantong at east China’s Jiangsu Province. Member of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and Chief of General Staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Chen Bingde, Chief of the Australian Defense, Force Angus Houston, and Secretary of Defense of Australia Dr Ian Watt, jointly chaired the strategic consultation. Started in 1997, this consultation mechanism is claimed to be one of the defense dialogue mechanisms between the Chinese military and foreign militaries with the highest rank, longest duration and smoothest progress. Reports noted that the two sides exchanged views on international and regional security issues, relations between China and Australia and also their two militaries, national defense and army building, as well as other issues of common concern.1

    Chief of Staff for Strategic Planning of the Jordanian Armed Forces, Brig. Gen. Atef Al Tal visited China last week. During his visit, he met with Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), Ma Xiaotian on 23 December. The Jordanian general visited China to attend the first meeting of the China-Jordan Defense Cooperation Committee of the defense ministries of the two nations.2 On the same day, Ma Xiaotian also met with the visiting Chief of General Staff of Bangladesh Army Manuel in Beijing. Interestingly, Ma Xiaotian described Bangladesh as a friendly ‘neighbor’ of China. On this occasion, he assured Bangladeshi General that the Chinese military was willing to strengthen the friendly cooperation between the two militaries, continue to support the modernization drive of the Bangladesh military and make joint efforts to boost the development of the relations between the two countries. On his part, Manuel expressed his gratitude to the Chinese government and the military for their long-time support and help to Bangladesh.3

    The Chief of General Staff of the Mongolian Armed Forces, Tserendejid Byambajav met with the member of the Central Military Commission and Chief of General Staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Chen Bingde, in Beijing on 22 December. On this occasion, Byambajav said that the Mongolian side was willing to further strengthen the high-level contacts with the Chinese side and expand the cooperation in personnel training and joint training.4

    The State councilor and Defense Minister of the People’s Republic of China, Liang Guanglie met with the visiting chief of Singaporean Navy, Rear Admiral Chew Men Leong in Beijing on 21 December. Later on the same day, the visiting admiral also met with the member of the Central Military Commission and commander of the Navy of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Wu Shengli. The two sides appreciated the pace and state of defence cooperation between China and Singapore.5

    Deputy defense minister of Afghanistan, Mohebullah Moheb paid an official visit to China last week. There he met wit Sun Jianguo, Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army on 17 December. During the meeting, Moheb said that the Afghan government and military were grateful to China for its support and the Afghan National Army was willing to strengthen the friendly ties with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.6

    Recently, Israeli Navy’s admiral Eliezer Marom visited China. He met with Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie on 13 December. On this occasion, Liang remarked that Sino-Israeli ties had developed smoothly since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1992. The two sides stressed that China and Israel should boost their bilateral relationship as well as inter-military links.7

    Meanwhile, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army General Ma Xiaotian reached Cuba on 13 December for a goodwill visit at the invitation of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces Ministry8 where he met with Cuban leader Raul Castro on 16 December. On this occasion, Ma said that China-Cuba traditional friendship has grown increasingly stronger since the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1960.9

    Reports noted that the visiting Chinese naval ship formation consisting of the “Kunlunshan” warship and the “Weishanhu” warship concluded its good-will visit and left Salman Port of Al Manamah, capital city of Bahrain, wrapping up its five-day-long good-will visit to Bahrain on 13 December.10

    According to reports, nearly 20 high-ranking officers and officials from the defense ministries of the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) attended the seminar on anti-terror experience which was held at the College of Defense Studies of the National Defense University (NDU) of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Beijing on 13 December. During this 7-day seminar, the representatives discussed role of the military in anti-terror actions, experience in participating joint anti-terror military exercises and prospect for future international anti-terror situation.11

    A 275-strong batch of Chinese troops left Beijing on 16 December left for Liberia to join the United Nations-mandated peacekeeping mission. Another batch of 283 Chinese peacekeeping troops will leave later in this month. The total 558 troop keepers will assume an 8-month-long mission in Liberia as the 11th contingent of Chinese peacekeeping troops to Liberia.12

    Reports noted that a two-day seminar on two years’ naval escort operation in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the Somali coast was held in Beijing on 20 and 21 December. It was organized by the Navy of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The seminar highlighted the main achievements and experience in escort practice, analyzed the complicated situation in the region, the challenges and explored ways how to promote the reform and innovation of the escort. It was noted that since the start of the escort mission in 2008, the PLA Navy has successively organized and commanded 18 warships, 14 helicopters and nearly 500 persons/times of special operation members in 7 batches to carry out escort operations. The Chinese naval escort has successfully escorted 3,097 merchant ships, received and escorted 7 hijacked merchant ships released by the pirates and 1 merchant ship attacked by the pirates, rescued 30 merchant ships attacked by the pirates in 21 times.13

    Another report noted that the use of the second generation of the PLA “electronic injury tag system” and “field individual search and rescue system” have greatly enhanced the efficiency of battlefield medical aid. It is learnt that these systems can be used in gathering, processing, storing and transmitting such information as individual data, injury conditions and rescue measures of the wounded, including 56 sub-items such as blood type, contraindication of drugs and case history. With these systems, the battlefield medical aid information can be shared by the four-level rescue system at remote medical unit, company and battalion, regiment and division levels, and the medical rescue bodies can have a good command of the basic information of the wounded in several seconds and rapidly work out the rescue plan.14

    The Navy of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) organized the inaugural meeting to set reform programme of the PLA on equipment procurement system and military representative system preparation in motion on 17 December in Beijing. The Central Military Commission (CMC) had authorized the Navy to carry out this pilot reform programme in March 2010. This pilot reform programme will include establishment of new equipment procurement center, equipment bidding center and equipment contract supervision department; it will cover price appraisal, contract negotiation and signing in equipment procurement, the bidding of equipment procurement and the supervision of equipment quality. The programmes will ensure the optimization and reorganization of the military representatives stationing in military industry enterprises, the establishment of independent support system for military representative system (the military representative system will no longer rely on the factories and institutes for support) and the implementation of vocational qualification training, appraisal, registration and management for the military representatives engaged in scientific research and procurement of weapons and equipment.15

    Reports suggested that the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the PLA General headquarters/departments attached great importance to the logistics support work of the PLA frontier and coastal defense troops in the last five years. It has invested several billion Yuan in the construction of living facilities, greatly improving the comprehensive support conditions of the PLA frontier and coastal defense troops during this period. At present, 85% of PLA coastal defense companies have solved the difficulties in getting drinking water, medical care and power supply, taking shower and keeping warm. According to the data made available by the office of the National Frontier and Coastal Defense Committee, China has invested 3 billion Yuan accumulatively in facility construction including 6,840km of patrol road, 147 bridges, and 2,400-odd border management signs as well as piers, duty rooms and helipads, laying firm foundation for coastal defense.16

    According to reports, the “Image Portraying and Achievement Evaluation in Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW)” has passed evaluation recently. This is one of the first batches of programs specially financed by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (CPSF). The Head of the program and postdoctoral researcher of the National Defense University of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Zhao Hewei informed that this program had mainly centered on studies on military image positioning, achievement model, index system and evaluation method in MOOTW and made a breakthrough exploration in image spreading mechanism and model construction of the state and the military. Cheng Manli, an expert of the Evaluation Committee of the CPSF and Deputy Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication under the Beijing University, informed that this program had targeted the cutting-edge issues both at home and abroad relating to the study on images of the state and military and explored the characteristics and laws of the spreading of military image in the full-media era, having strong practical operability.17

    The conference on the standardization construction of the rear area quartermaster depots of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) concluded on 21 December. The conference noted that the ability of the PLA quartermaster depots in emergency-handling support, sustainable support and aid support had been greatly enhanced in last few years. The media that covered the conference reported that the General Logistics Department and all major units of the PLA had prioritized the building of support bases in those years, increased investment in infrastructure building, newly built and rebuilt a number of automatic three-dimensional, multi-storied and platform depots, and improved auxiliary facilities for receiving and distributing, power supply and fire fighting. Resultantly, most depots have put an end to the history of “manual work” by officers and men in material receiving and distribution through the development of new-type conveyors and the upgrading of various loading/unloading and transport machinery. The new technologies as the LAN, automatic identification and security monitoring have been widely adopted and the information-based construction of the depot system has made headway.18

    Reports suggested that the year-end assessment of the three services to test the training quality, combat capability, training effectiveness and training style of the PLA troops has been carried out recently. The actual-combat assessment included the actual-troop, actual-equipment and live-ammunition drills which covered all aspects ranging from land to air, from surface to underwater, from snowfield to Gobi desert, and from air to deep sea.19

    In other developments, reports noted that China would launch the 7th Beidou navigation satellite at an opportune moment by the “Long March III A” carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. This will be the last space launch made by China in 2010.20

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