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China ‘two sessions’: Taiwan reference seen as PLA brass calls for focus on ‘urban operations’
- PLA lieutenant general and NPC deputy Ma Yiming urges speedy improvement of strategic capability to realise national reunification
- Comments on urban combat indicate plans to seize Taiwan, though Beijing has taken a softer tone of late in a push for ‘peaceful reunification’
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Amber Wangin Beijing
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) should strengthen its study of urban combat, a military deputy to China’s top legislative body has said, in a clear reference to preparations for seizing Taiwan – the self-run island regarded as breakaway territory by Beijing.
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The Chinese military should “speedily improve its strategic capability” to realise national reunification, PLA lieutenant general Ma Yiming told a panel on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the annual full session of China’s parliament.
Ma, who is also a deputy to the NPC, served at least from 2017 to 2020 as deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department at the Central Military Commission (CMC), China’s top decision-making body for the armed forces.
“[China should] strengthen research on specific issues such as urban operations and [logistic] support,” Ma was quoted as saying in the official readout from Sunday’s panel discussion involving NPC delegates from the PLA and armed police force.
This came as a government budget tabled at the NPC’s opening session the same day proposed a 7.2 per cent hike in PLA funding to about 1.55 trillion yuan (US$224.3 billion), at a time when Beijing is tackling tensions on multiple fronts, including over Taiwan and the South China Sea, apart from intensifying US rivalry.
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Over the past decade, the PLA “has been increasing its study, training, and preparation for future urban warfare”, in which it has “limited experience”, a report by the US-based Institute for the Study of War said last year.
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