China held a parade of its armed forces Sunday to mark the 90th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in a display of military might.
Since coming to power in 2012, President Xi Jinping has led efforts to modernize the PLA — still the world’s largest standing military — and to consolidate the ruling Communist Party’s control over the armed forces.
At the expansive Zhurihe training base in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous region, Xi, who has also trumpeted building a stronger, combat-ready army, appeared wearing a camouflage military suit.
He stood inside an open-top field jeep that drove past lines of troops for his inspection.
“Comrades, you have worked hard,” he said, to which the troops responded: “We are serving the people!“
China said in March it would raise its defense spending by around seven percent this year, the slowest annual percentage increase since 1991.
Beijing is engaged in a decades-long build-up and modernization of its once-backward armed forces, as it seeks military clout commensurate with its economic might and increasingly asserts its disputed territorial claims in Asian waters.
The PLA, originally called the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, was founded in 1927 when Communist soldiers seized the southern Jiangxi provincial town of Nanchang from Nationalist Party (“Kuomintang“) armies in what is known today as the Nanchang uprising.