Soldiers' live use of phones reviewed

As hundreds of millions of Chinese become increasingly dependent on their smartphones for daily affairs, the People's Liberation Army has been exploring ways to govern its members' use of the omnipresent gadget.

According to reports in PLA Daily, the military's flagship newspaper, many PLA units have organized discussions and debates on whether and how officers and soldiers should use smartphones.

The issue became a hot topic on Friday after the newspaper published a report that several officers and soldiers of the PLA's 14th Group Army used smartphones for live-streams of their physical exercises and to play smartphone-based games.