13:34 GMT, December 8, 2009 Huang Xueping, spokesman of the Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), categorized the military activities in 2009 into four types. Besides military mutual visits, constant breakthroughs have been made in the Sino-foreign joint military exercises and military trainings, and the escort operation conducted by the naval taskforce of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the waters off the Somali coast has directly developed military cooperation in the non-traditional security field.

On the occasions of the respective 60th anniversaries of the founding of the PRC, the Navy of the Chinese PLA and the Air Force of the Chinese PLA, a number of international officers were invited to attend the celebrations and the Chinese PLA’s peace-loving, open and ready-for-cooperation image is reinforced.

In the analysts’ opinion, what’s underlying the military activities can be detected: with the increasing transparency of the Chinese military, the Chinese PLA strikes a more open and confident posture to the public across the world and it’s also true the other way around.

For instance, regarding information release, the website of the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC was launched in August this year. The website drew wide attention of the public home and abroad in the very beginning and immediately turned into a hot topic in the coverage of various media. The hits at the website of the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC in a single day exceeded 130 million at the highest and the number of hacker attacks amounted to 2.3 million in the first month of the website’s formal operation. The data about visits as well as attacks to the website manifests how much attention the Chinese military is drawing around the world.

Openness means confidence. According to Zhang Zhaozhong, deputy director of the Teaching and Research Department of Military Logistics, Military Science and Technology and Equipment of the National Defense University, the year of 2009 is a year crucial for the Chinese military to demonstrate its military diplomacy of a big country. On the one hand, Chinese economy still enjoys robust growth despite the financial crisis engulfing the world, China’s overall national strength is beefed up, and China gains more and more recognition of other countries. As an integral part of the overall national diplomacy, the military diplomacy should be suitable for the development of the country. On the other hand, with the notable improvement of the Chinese PLA in its strength and ability, the Chinese military diplomacy embodies more and more confidence.

As expected by Zhang Zhaozhong, the Chinese military diplomacy will continue to feature the posture of military diplomacy of a big country and it is a prevailing trend that China will establish transparent military relationship of mutual trust with other countries.

(Translated by China Military Online)


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Xing Shiwei