# People's Liberation Army
Latest news and articles about People's Liberation Army
Total: 66 articles found
Seconds That Matter: Inside the Rocket Unit Grooming China’s Precision and Resolve
A human-focused profile of a Rocket Force launch unit shows how rigorous time discipline, hands-on training and morale rituals underpin China’s drive for precise, reliable missile operations. The piece illuminates a broader PLA push to professionalize forces, tightening decision cycles and enhancing deterrent posture while also serving domestic messaging goals.
Generations of Service: Veteran Bugler and 76‑Year‑Old Grandmother Mark Emotional Send‑Off for New Recruits
State media circulated images of a Korean War veteran playing a farewell bugle and a 76‑year‑old grandmother handing dumplings to a new recruit at an enlistment ceremony, portraying generational continuity and public support for the military. The vignette serves both as a human interest story and as a deliberate piece of messaging that reinforces domestic legitimacy for China’s defence posture.
Jilin’s Winter Drive: How a Northeastern City Recruited Its Next Cohort for the PLA
Jilin City completed its 2026 first-half recruitment drive by combining winter-tourism publicity, house-to-house outreach and strict medical screening to select a politically reliable, physically fit cohort for PLA service. The campaign emphasized personal sacrifice, ethnic inclusion and party commitment, signaling how local governments mobilize social resources to meet national defence needs.
Drums, Dragon Dances and Red Sashes: China’s Local Spectacles Behind the 2026 Recruit Send‑Offs
Across several Chinese provinces, elaborate local ceremonies marked the 2026 spring enlistment, combining folk performances, family send‑offs, and patriotic rituals. These spectacles are designed to normalise military service, integrate diverse communities into national narratives and sustain enlistment pipelines for a modernising PLA.
A Pile of Stones, a Lesson in Limits: How a PLA Unit Turned Thermal-Image Deception into a Training Doctrine
During a high‑altitude PLA exercise, red‑team troops used sun‑warmed rocks to create false thermal signatures that misled blue‑team thermal imagers and triggered a simulated defeat. The blue team responded by studying environmental effects on infrared sensors, building a regional database and revising operational procedures to avoid similar deceptions.
Spring at the Edge: How China’s Border Garrisons Cultivate Greenhouses, Honors and Home Ties to Sustain Frontier Morale
As spring slowly returns to China’s high frontiers, PLA border units are planting greenhouses, hanging wooden star plaques on an honour tree and cultivating family and civic ties to sustain morale. These initiatives improve living conditions, reinforce unit identity and serve a broader domestic messaging effort about the normality and dedication of frontier service.
How a PLA 'Red Company' Turns Revolutionary Lore into Modern Fighting Credibility
State media has highlighted the 78th Group Army’s “Red Third Company” for combining modern mechanized tactics with a long revolutionary lineage, claiming the unit destroyed more than ten opposing vehicles in a recent exercise while sustaining no casualties. The report serves both as a tactical vignette about mobility and small-unit initiative and as political messaging that binds combat proficiency to historical memory and civic virtue.
China’s Half-Year Military Review Signals Faster Modernization, New Tactics and Wider Reach
China’s six-month military review stresses new platforms, doctrinal shifts toward integrated, distributed warfare, and a broader operational reach. These changes complicate deterrence and crisis management in the Indo-Pacific and increase pressures on regional militaries to adapt.
Xi Reaffirms Party Grip on the Guns as PLA and PAP Rank-and-File Praise 'Important' Speech
Xi Jinping’s speech to PLA and PAP delegations was presented by Chinese military media as drawing enthusiastic support across the forces, emphasizing Party control, combat readiness, and continued modernization. The remarks reinforce Xi’s long-term campaign to centralize political oversight of the military and have implications for China’s regional posture and deterrence calculus.
Beijing Reaffirms Political Control as Central to Military Modernization
A March 8 commentary from a state military outlet reiterated that the Communist Party’s political construction is the linchpin of China’s defence and military modernization. The piece stresses a cautious, unity-first modernization that integrates ideological control with technological and organisational reforms, underscoring trade-offs between political loyalty and technical meritocracy.
Xi’s 14th Visit to the PLA Delegation Underscores Enduring Priorities: Party Control, Tech-Driven Modernisation and Legalisation of the Military
Xi Jinping’s 14th visit to the PLA delegation reiterates a durable blueprint for China’s military: firm Party control, institutional and legal reforms, and a technology-driven push to upgrade combat capability. The speech underscores continuity rather than new policy, but its repeated themes deepen the signal that Beijing intends to sustain an accelerated, innovation-focused military modernisation.
From Classrooms to Drill Squares: China’s Campaign to Instill Military Patriotism in Schoolchildren
Chinese military and local armed‑forces units have been staging immersive national‑defence education activities in schools—using hero stories, equipment displays, martial arts and themed exhibitions—to instil patriotic and pro‑military sentiment among children. The programmes form part of a sustained drive to deepen civil‑military ties and normalise the visibility of the armed forces in everyday life, with implications for recruitment, domestic legitimacy and how the public may respond to future security initiatives.