PLA to celebrate 90th birthday with stronger military

Beijing July 20 (IANS) It has been a big year for China s military as the People s Liberation Army (PLA) prepares to celebrate its 90th birthday.

In April this year China s first domestically produced aircraft carrier was launched followed by the debut of its new generation of destroyer in June. In July the country s first aircraft carrier allowed visits by the public for the first time.

As the 90th birthday approaches the country s army has shown how much its military capacity has grown reports Xinhua news agency.

The PLA has come a long way since its birth during the armed uprising in Nanchang city on August 1 1927 when it had only 20 000 soldiers.

Ninety years later China boasts of two million servicemen making it the world s largest military force.

Besides the growth in numbers the PLA has armed its soldiers with world-class equipment.

During China s epic V-Day parade in September 2015 the country displayed its Dongfeng-5B intercontinental strategic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads and its Dongfeng-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles described by some media as the "carrier killer".

Other cutting-edge weaponry included the PLA s state-of-the-art tanks unmanned aerial vehicles and its new generation of airborne early warning and control aircraft carrier-based fighters and attack helicopters that fly low across the sky.

In April China launched its second aircraft carrier in a Dalian shipyard in the northeastern province of Liaoning. It is the first carrier designed and built by China.

The country s first carrier the Liaoning was a refitted Soviet Union-made carrier put into commission by the PLA Navy in 2012.

Another Navy development was the launch of a new destroyer a domestically designed and produced 10 000-tonne vessel.

The destroyer is the first vessel of China s new generation of destroyers equipped with new air defence anti-missile anti-ship and anti-submarine weapons.

All this can be seen in a video titled "PLA Today" released by the Ministry of National Defence last week Xinhua reported.

The 16-minute English-language video with Chinese subtitles displayed a host of unmanned "smart" military vehicles reconnaissance robots and drones followed by footage of live-fire drills in the South China Sea and the East China Sea in July last year.

"If war is declared we are ready " one line said.

The video was not the PLA s only bid for attention on social media. The military debuted a five-episode live-streaming programme on China s Twitter-like Weibo service on Tuesday.

The first episode featured China s airborne troops and showed the tough training soldiers must undergo.

In 2017 China the world s second largest economy budgeted 1.04 trillion yuan ($153 billion) for annual military expenditures.

The figure is second only to the US which has a military spending budget of $583.7 billion.

--IANS
mr/soni/