President Xi Jinping attended a reception in the Great Hall of the People on July 31, on the eve of the annual PLA Army Day on August 1. State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe gave his greetings to those assembled, hailing the armed forces’ support for China’s national sovereignty, security and development interests.
At the reception, President Xi gave a very lengthy speech on the history and the achievements of the PLA as the backbone of the Communist Party of China’s successful attempt to liberate the Chinese people. He underlined the crucial role of the military in that process and urged the continued modernization of the military. He underlined the key principle of the subordination of the army to the party and urged the PLA to enhance its capabilities in order to defend the nation against any threat.
He also urged the PLA to stay close to the interests of the masses of the Chinese people and underlined society’s need to support the military, including in the matter of civil-military integration, a concept which Xi has emphasized for some time: “To advance the military-strengthening industry, we must further promote the development of military-civilian integration, and build a national strategic system and capability for military-civilian integration. Elevating the development of military-civilian integration into a national strategy is a major achievement of our party’s long-term exploration of the law of coordinated development of economic construction and national defense construction. It is a major decision based on the overall situation of national development and security and a major move. It is necessary to strengthen top-level design, strengthen demand integration, coordinate incremental stock, simultaneously promote system and mechanism reform, system and element integration, system and standards construction, and accelerate the formation of an all-factor, multi-field, high-efficiency military-civilian integration in-depth development pattern, and strive to create a new situation of coordinated, balanced and compatible development of economic construction and national defense construction.”
