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China has the world’s biggest military force. Now Xi Jinping wants it to be the best

Big changes in the wings for China’s military hardware and top brass

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Nearly 90 per cent of the military delegates to the party congress are new faces. Photo: Reuters

The Chinese military will embark on a massive hardware upgrade and top personnel shake-up under President Xi Jinping’s orders for the PLA to become a world-class fighting force in the next three decades.

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Laying out his ambitious plan for the People’s Liberation Army in a report to the Communist Party’s national congress on Wednesday, Xi said the PLA must modernise by 2035 and become a top-ranked military by 2050.

“A military force is built to fight. Our military must regard combat readiness as the goal for all its work and focus on how to win when it is called upon,” Xi said.

He said technology was at the core of combat strength and the PLA needed to apply information technology and modern warfare strategies to advance.

Xi also said the military’s ongoing overhaul should include changes to the PLA’s top brass, better integration between the civilian and military sectors, and stronger border defence forces.

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