Beijing : China’s armed forces have shut down newspapers published by the country’s seven military regions as part of a programme to downsize and streamline the world’s largest standing military.
The papers, also including War Flag, Vanguard and People’s Armed Forces, have been gradually superseded by official news and propaganda television and websites for soldiers whose access to the Internet and smart phones is restricted.
The military’s People’s Liberation Army Daily said all the publications ceased publishing last week. The oldest, Soldiers News, dated from 1930. The closures leave the storied PLA Daily as the military’s sole remaining daily publication, although state broadcaster CCTV also devotes an entire channel to the armed forces staffed by uniformed officers. China is in the process of cutting 300,000 personnel from the 2.3 million-member military, reorganising its command structure and jettisoning non-essential functions such as arts troupes.
Beijing publicises landing drills near Taiwan after POLLS
Chinese forces recently held live-fire landing exercises along the coast opposite Taiwan, the military’s official television channel said, days after the self-governing island elected an independence-leaning president.
CCTV7 said the drills were staged by the 31st Group Army based in Xiamen near the Taiwanese-held island of Kinmen, considered one of the People’s Liberation Army’s “frontline” units
for any action regarding Taiwan. It said only that the exercises were held “recently” without giving an exact date.
Equipment used in the drills included long-range rockets, self-propelled howitzers, amphibious tanks and helicopters, the channel said.
No details on the numbers of troops or equipment were given. The Defense Ministry did not immediately say whether the drills were related to Saturday’s election that was won by Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party.
China routinely says its exercises are planned well in advance and not timed to respond to specific events.
However, noting the units involved and the physical similarity of the exercise area to parts of Taiwan’s coastline, the popular Sina Military website said that “given the certain amount of risk the two sides are facing today, the hypothetical target of the 31st Group Army’s exercises might be those ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”
