All China's 2.3 million soldiers and officers are now devoted in full swing to military training to mark the 79th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), which falls on Tuesday.

China's army has managed to sustain vitality for nearly eight decades since it has kept upgrading its functions and missions in line with times' demands, said Hu Wenlong, researcher with Chinese PLA Military Academy of Sciences and chief editor of the Military Sciences Press.

"Military training is an imperative task for fulfilling the army's historical mission in the new century and the new development stage," Hu told Xinhua.

The PLA Daily has intensively reported military exercises staged by the PLA's army, air force and navy, including missile launching exercises.

It reported that in a certain southern part of China the air force organized an exercise in late July with one team of advanced jet fighters playing the "red army" and another one playing the "blue army".

Hu stressed military training, started in the beginning of this year, as the only way of improving the army's power and combat capability amid an increasingly complicated international strategic situation dominated by information technologies.

An editorial published by PLA Daily Tuesday pointed out the conflict between the army's modernization level and the requirements for winning a regional war in an IT-based era is now the major problem challenging the country's troops.

"The army should shift its reliance from battle force and productivity to the development and innovation of scientific and information technologies, so as to be adapted to the global military reform trend," said the editorial.

It asks for putting into effect the scientific concept of development, which will help transform the army building mode and promote fulfillment of the army's new mission.

Chinese President Hu Jintao, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), has urged the armed forces to earnestly perform their historical mission in several occasions this year.

Hu outlined the army's new mission in the new century as safeguarding the Party's leadership, ensuring security in the current important strategic period, protecting national interests and promoting the world's peace and development.

"But the core task, that is to serve the people, has never changed," said Hu Wenlong, adding that President Hu's new definition of the army's mission a vivid demonstration.

"The Party's leadership is key to the country's lasting stability and durable peace, which conforms to the people's fundamental interests," Hu Wenlong said.

To list guarantee of the Party's ruling status as the first task of the army's historical mission fully displays the Party's deep understanding of the governing rules , he said.

The first two decades of this century is of strategic importance to China's economic development, and the defense and military forces are always the most reliable and important support for security in this period, he added.

The army also shoulders sacred responsibilities of defending national sovereignty and territory integrity, which are premises for realizing the people's basic interests.

A nation's interests is now expanding from its traditional sovereignty over territory, territorial waters and territorial air space to its benefits in oceans, outer space and electromagnetic field, he explained.

The army should enhance its strength in safeguarding marine security, improve effectiveness in preventing outer space threats, and maintain national security in electromagnetic field and other sectors, he said.

To seek a new path of military modernization and to meet these new security demands, it's necessary to well coordinate and balance the country's economic development and national defense building, he said.

Source: Xinhua