Beijing, Jan 4 : The Chinese President Xi Jinping has told the armed forces to be “capable of combat and sure to win” in a move designed to bolster his political standing.
Xi Jinping has reaffirmed his status as China’s most dominant leader since Chairman Mao with another tub-thumping display of military brawn involving thousands of heavily armed troops, a report in The Guardian said on Thursday.
Speaking at a military assembly in the northern province of Hebei, Xi told about 7,000 service men and women they should fear “neither hardship nor death” as they implemented the Communist party’s orders.
The military should “create an elite and powerful force that is always ready for the fight, capable of combat and sure to win in order to fulfill the tasks bestowed by the Party and the people in the new era,” added Xi, who was recently anointed one of modern China’s most powerful rulers.
“As Xi Jinping announced his instructions, there was prolonged and thunderous applause,” the party’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, reported in a front-page story, alongside a photograph showing Xi clad in combat fatigues and black leather gloves.
UNI
