From Chinese Press

Overreactions to PLA's exercises unnecessary

(People's Daily Online)
Updated: 2010-08-09 10:21

Recently, Chinese media has frequently reported on military exercises of the Chinese army. Those reports not only let people see the modernization of the Chinese army's armament, but also show to the public the determination and competence of the Chinese army to protect our homeland and to safeguard regional peace and stability.

Public reports about routine military exercises are intended to increase transparency for the Chinese army. On the one hand, it allows the army to show its progresses to those who has been always caring about national defense modernization. With the support of the Chinese people, our army has mastered more and more advanced armaments and promoted their capability of fulfilling various kinds of tasks under the circumstance of more and more complicated technological conditions.

On the other hand, it shows to the world the orientation of the Chinese army's modernization and power usage so as to increase military transparency to foreign countries. In some cases, the Chinese army will invite foreign military officers to China and organize joint military exercises with foreign armies. These are all of great significance to strengthen foreign countries' understanding towards the Chinese army, increase bilateral trust, eliminate misunderstandings, maintain regional stability, better help us carry out international tasks together and finally safeguard world peace.

Nonetheless, along with more and more reports on Chinese army's military exercises, some people have become increasingly sensitive. Therefore, suspicion arises, and some Western media have done lots of work in that aspect. For example, some of them tried to connect China's routine military exercises, including Chinese navy's routine military experimental drill, the army's rocket artillery shooting drill, long-distance maneuverable rescue drill and its joint anti-terrorist drill with Central Asian countries, with the on-going exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2010 led by the US and 13 other countries, as well as with the joint US-South Korea exercises on the Japanese Sea.

It seems that they intend to prove China's military exercises are totally temporary emergency actions against them. They also advocate that the Chinese army has "the ambition of fighting for hegemony against the United States." This is obviously an overreaction.

In fact, the military exercise is the highest form of normal training for armies of all countries in peacetime. Almost 10 percent of a country's national defense expenses go toward military exercises. Compared with Western countries, the Chinese army still has very limited scale, level, space and time extension, and frequency.