China to advance its military ties with Pakistan: spokesperson

BEIJING: Chinese defence ministry spokesperson Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang announced that China will further advance its military ties with Pakistan, as a part of joint efforts of promoting their defence capability.

While announcing this at a news briefing, he said, “Pakistan and China are all-weather strategic cooperative partners. The two militaries have been keeping a high-level defence and security cooperation. In the recently concluded Zhuhai Air Show, the Pakistani military also put on a good performance. The high-level cooperation and exchanges in different services between the two militaries show great mutual strategic trust between the two militaries. We are positive about further advancing military relationship with Pakistan.”

Ren Guoqiang told the reporters that Chinese and Pakistani Air Forces will begin their 7th Shahing Joint Air Force Exercise in Bholari Air Force Base in Pakistan this week.

China is sending fighters, fighter-bombers and early warning aircraft to the exercise. This exercise is in the annual cooperation plan between the two countries and is a model of Pakistan-China Air Forces’ cooperation and will help promote bilateral air force cooperation and improve combat capabilities of both sides, he added.

To a question, the spokesperson said, at the domestic front, China has been stressing training for combat-readiness and joint-operation and has conducted training in theatre commands and quality training in different arms and services.

“We also promote high standard training organised according to plans and have conducted more basic tactical training and strengthened the supervision over military training. The troops are showing unprecedented passion and a brand new look on training work has been observed across the military. The military training work has yielded six achievements in 2018. First, we introduced a new training regulation and programme, which is a big step towards regulated and rules-based training. Second, we held mass training and skills competition activities, which brought a trend of training across the military. Third, we conducted targeted and force on force training, which helps improve the capabilities of our task forces. Fourth, in a self-reflective spirit, we held a special conference on addressing problems that constrain us from promoting battle-focused training. Fifth, we strengthened training supervision and launched a campaign to combat ‘peace disease’, which turned around the work style for training,” the spokesperson said.

“Sixth, we started a pilot project in land planning for military purposes, which blazed a new path for building training facilities,” he added.

“The military will follow President Xi Jinping’s thinking on building a strong military and further promote training for combat,” he concluded.