China Military:

We noticed that the White Paper introduced the measures and progress made in reforming the national defense and the armed forces. So, what are the reasons behind the progress and what kind of measures have been taken to push forward the reform? Last November, the Central Military Commission held the working group meeting to comprehensively launch reform for military policies and institutions, which was also mentioned in the White Paper. Would you please talk about the major characteristics and progress of the reform?

Wang Wei:

Thanks for your questions. I'll start answering your first question. President Xi Jinping was personally involved in leading and pushing forward the reform of national defense and armed forces, offering the fundamental guarantee for the reform. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, President Xi has been involved in the decision-making part of the reform, and included the national defense and military reform into the overall plan of comprehensively deepening reform. As the leader of the Leading Group for National Defense and Military Reform of the Central Military Commission, he worked to study major issues with regard to the reform and formulated the plan. He took part in a series of group meetings, presented the military flags to the newly adjusted and established units and delivered a series of major speeches. We overcame many difficulties and made a huge achievement in deepening the reform of national defense and armed forces. All of these are under the strong leadership of the Party, Central Military Commission and President Xi and guided by President Xi's thinking on strengthening the military.

The national defense and military reform is based on the systematic design of three major issues. First, reforming the leadership and command system and removing institutional barriers. Second, supporting reforms in force structure and composition and solving structural problems. Third, deepening reform of military policies and institutions and resolving policy-related problems. We owe our achievements to the leadership of the Party Central Committee, the Central Military Commission and the guidance of President Xi Jinping on the national defense and military reform, and to the concerted efforts of the Party, the military, and all the people in China. The PLA has dismantled the long-established systems of general departments, military area commands and the force composition with a dominating land force, and established a new pattern of the CMC exercising overall leadership, the TCs responsible for military operations and the services focusing on developing capabilities.

Your second question is about the reform of policies and institutions. The reform of military policies and institutions is a major part and solid guarantee for deepening the national defense and military reform. It involves all areas, all aspects, and all parts of the military practice, and is more systemic, comprehensive, and balanced. One of the characteristics of the military policies and institutions reform is to maintain a profound understanding of the implication of policy and system building, and strengthen planning at the top level and adopt a holistic approach in doing so. We should comprehensively advance the military policies and institutions reform, striding forward along the path to build a stronger military and fully transform the people's armed forces into world-class forces. We should launch our reform in the fields of command, construction, management and inspection. We should develop a socialist military institution with Chinese characteristics. We should focus on reform measures from four aspects: strengthening Party building in the military, improving policies and institutions for military force employment, reformulating policies and institutions and reforming the policies and institutions for military management. All of these measures have a clear, comprehensive and balanced guide for their reform, which is catered for national and military conditions and is suited for the new era, new mission and new system.

According to the plan of the policy and institutional reform, by 2020, reform of the main structures of all systems and areas will be completed, and the basic framework of the socialist military policy and institution with Chinese characteristics will be established. By 2022, we will further improve the coordinated policies and establish the system of socialist military policy and institution with Chinese characteristics. Since the CMC held its working group meeting on policy and institutional reform last year, all departments and units in the military have taken their responsibilities to mull over plans in different systems and areas, with steady progress in military policy and institutional reform. We also actively responded to the urgent demands of the military reform and carried out a series of reform measures with respect to Party building in the military, improving the wellbeing of service personnel, the joint operations commands and conducting supervision on military training. We have already put all 27 policies into practice in the first half of the year. Related information has been released by the media, which you can refer to.

All these policies played an important role in deepening reform, uniting the military and responding to the concerns of officers and soldiers, which were highly commended by the military.