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| 80 Years of the PLA |
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When Li Shuiqing joined the Red Army at just 13 years of age in 1930, he was disgruntled with his company commander. The company, which had more than 100 soldiers, had to share a handful of rifles and dozens of spears and broadswords. Li was told, as a "Little Red Devil" -- a tag given to all teenage recruits -- he was too young to hold any weapon. "Stop grumbling. As long as we follow the Red Army, the whole of The Communist Party-led army was only three years old at that time. Li was typical of its soldiers -- mostly uneducated peasants or laborers who had no logistics or weapon supplies. The peasant guerrillas
Over the next three years, Li and his fellow soldiers followed the Red Army in fighting against the troops led by the Kuomintang, then the ruling party of But in 1934, the Kuomintang launched a fifth round of attacks and captured the Red Army's revolutionary base, which triggered the beginning of the Communist's two-year "strategic retreat", now universally known as the Long March. "The 12,500-km trek was full of hardships, bloodshed and do-or-die battles," said Li, then a company political instructor, charged with educating his troops in Communist ideology. When Li and his soldiers were crossing the wetlands in north "Hunger, disease and swamps killed thousands of my comrades, including my first company commander," Li said. Of the 86,000 men and women who joined the Long March, just over 7,000 survived. Li was one of them. Millet and rifles against Japanese invasion Under pressure to defend Though better equipped, "xiaomi jia buqiang" or "millet and rifles", were the basic equipment of the military forces. The two military groups used primarily guerrilla tactics but also managed to fight a number of conventional battles with the Japanese. "We have no food and uniforms, but enemies will deliver them to us, we have no guns and cannons, but enemies will make them for us." This became a famous couplet from the Song of the Guerilla, written in 1938, and sung by Li and his fellow soldiers during the war. It is still sung today. Following the victory over Armed with more advanced weapons imported from the Few people anticipated that the PLA, with its simple "millet and rifle" approach, could overwhelm the Kuomintang troops in just a few years and drive them to New Shortly after the founding of New China, Li and his troops, under the name of the People's Volunteer Army, crossed the With virtually no air defenses, the Chinese troops suffered hugely from air attacks led by the Li, then a deputy commander of the 67th army corps, said the fiercest battle occurred at Jinchengchuan in October 1951, which lasted 10 days and left nearly 15,000 Chinese soldiers killed. "But we also killed more than 23,000 enemy troops," Li said. The 1950-1953 Korean War, which ended in a ceasefire, served as a catalyst for the rapid modernization of the PLA. Mao Zedong, the late Chinese leader and one of the founders of the PLA, set to work on strengthening its navy and air force, which were set up in late 1949, using technological and financial aid from the In 1956, Establishing a professional military force equipped with modern weapons and doctrines was one of the "Four Modernizations" announced by the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1964. In 1966, the PLA set up its strategic missile troops, the Second Artillery Force. Li, who entered a military academy after returning from Modernization Achievements of the army's reform and modernization were displayed at the grand military parade marking the 50th founding anniversary of the People's Republic on October 1, 1999. Li, along with other retired generals, watched the parade from the Tian'anmen Gate Tower. Demonstrating for the first time was a squadron of 25 helicopters, the youngest branch of the PLA service, which showed that The performance of aerial tankers during the parade was designed to demonstrate the modernization of the PLA Air Force and its capability in long-range combat. There were also four strategic missile formations from the Second Artillery Force, including earth-to-earth missiles, campaign and tactical missiles, earth-to-earth nuclear missiles of intermediate-range, and strategic, long-range nuclear missiles. It was the first time that "The 1999 military parade compared with the one in 1949 was like the difference between heaven and earth," said Li, who, a division commander in 1949, led 1,800 infantrymen marching across "The weapons displayed in 1949 were omnifarious. Nearly 95 percent of them were seized from enemies. They were made by the "The grand finale of the 1949 parade was the mounted troops. Their majestic appearance made everyone else envious," the 90-year old Li said. "But in the 1999 parade, the highlight was the strategic missile troops." The cavalry, once the major fighting force, was abolished from the PLA in the mid 1980s. With the rapid development of information technology, the PLA speeded up its modernization with an increased focus on mechanization and informatization. The PLA has announced that it will reach its goal of building "informationized" armed forces and be capable of winning informationized wars by the mid-21st century. Experts say "Given the fact China has 1.3 billion people, 9.6 million square kilometers of territory, 22,000 kilometers of borders and 18,000 kilometers of oceanic boundaries, China's military spending, either in absolute value or proportion, still lags behind many countries in the world," Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said in March during the annual parliamentary session. The money to be added to this year's defense budget will mainly be used for three purposes: to raise the salaries of military servicemen, to improve their living and training conditions -- not to mention the new range of uniforms that cost more than six billion yuan -- and to "appropriately increase" the spending on arms to improve the military's defense capacity. In keeping with the modernization process, the PLA has demobilized millions of men and women since 1978. The number of its personnel declined from a peak figure of 6.27 million in 1951, during the Korean War, to 2.3 million in 2005. Over the past 15 years, the PLA has recruited more than 30,000 doctorate and master degree holders and more than 90 percent of regiment officers in PLA's combat troops have received university education. Ninety-year-old Li is now working on a book of his experiences during the war years from his hospital bed, dictating his memories to his secretary. "From a Little Red Devil to an infantry division commander and then to the chief of China's strategic missile troops, I'm proud to have witnessed and experienced the changes of China's armed forces," Li said. (Xinhua News Agency July 14, 2007) |
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