August 1 marked the 90th founding anniver-sary of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA),an enigma to many foreigners, thanks to theforeign media hype about the supposed mili-tary threat posed by a rising China.
As a matter of fact, the PLA’s mandate ismaintaining peace. It has a historical recordof safeguarding national sovereignty, securityand development interests as well as main-taining world peace and promoting globalprogress.
Led by the Communist Party of China(CPC), the PLA has greatly contributed toChinese people’s liberation, socialist mod-ernization drive and reform. It now providessupport for building a moderately pros-perous society and realizing the vision ofChinese rejuvenation.
With its mandate including safeguardingregional and world peace, the PLA alsoshoulders the responsibility of coping withemergencies and military threats to protectairspace and territorial water sovereignty andsecurity. It also participates in disaster relief,security and economic and social construc-tion. The PLA has always been in the frontlineof rescue and relief operations in naturaldisasters like earthquakes and fl oods.
It also actively participates in thepeacekeeping operations of the UnitedNations. Since sending the first militaryobservers to the UN peacekeeping forcesin 1990, it has dispatched more than 4,100military personnel to 14 countries andregions to take part in UN peacekeepingwork. Six Chinese peacekeepers died inthe line of duty in the past 16 years. Of thepermanent members of the UN SecurityCouncil, China has contributed the largestnumber of troops to UN peacekeepingmissions.
The PLA forces are guided by the principle of active defense, which is the basicmilitary strategic doctrine of the CPC. This in-dicates the PLA will never start a war but willnot hesitate to safeguard China’s interests inthe face of an attack.
Since the founding of the People’sRepublic of China, the PLA has never pro-voked a war. But it is not afraid to makesacrifices to fight back any invasion, whichis why it has won people’s trust. The reasonthe PLA constantly updates its weapons andequipment is to improve its combativenessbecause as the saying goes, only an armycapable of fi ghting can end the war.
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