Chinese Defense Ministry introduces new spokesmen, opens military base to media

China's Ministry of National Defense (MOD) Friday introduced its new spokesmen, Senior Colonel Geng Yansheng and Colonel Yang Yujun, to domestic and foreign media during a press tour to an engineering regiment of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

Geng, 50, and Yang, 40, have become the ministry's third and fourth spokesmen.

Their appointment came ahead of the PLA's founding anniversary on Aug. 1. Their two predecessors, Hu Changming and Huang Xueping, have been transferred to other jobs in the ministry.

Geng told Xinhua that the MOD plans to hold regular press briefings, since 16 other ministries have done so.

About 140 reporters, photographers and cameramen from home and abroad visited the engineering regiment building in southern suburban Beijing, watching dozens of soldiers demonstrating a mock rescue operation at a building which was "reduced" to rubble in a quake.

Founded in 1964, the engineering regiment trains rescue members for the China International Search and Rescue (CISAR), which was established in 2001 with its personnel drawn from the China Seismological Bureau and the General Hospital of the Armed Police Force.

The CISAR has completed six domestic rescue operations in Xinjiang, Qinghai and Sichuan, and six international rescue missions in Algeria, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia and Haiti.

After watching the simulation training, many reporters held interviews with the CISAR members and enquired as to how they managed to work in the face of big disasters.

"I felt deeply sad and hopeless when someone died in front of me after the quake," said Gao Yansheng, a 19-year-old CISAR member, who took part in the Yushu earthquake search and rescue operation in April.

Another CISAR member, whose name was not given, said he was "astonished and also anxious" during the Sichuan earthquake rescue work in 2008.

Liu Xiangyang, deputy director of the CISAR, said in an interview with Xinhua that CISAR members became physically and psychologically stronger after going through the Sichuan earthquake rescue work.

CISAR members needed to learn more about earthquakes and put up with more complicated disaster situations, Liu added.

"It will become a routine activity of the PLA to open its military bases for the media interaction beginning around August 1," said Senior Colonel Li Zhen, vice director with the MOD's International Communication Office. "

It is for the third time in the last three years that the MOD has tried to showcase the transparency of the 2.3-million strong PLA. In 2008, the ministry invited 103 foreign and domestic reporters to an armored division of the PLA's thump-card No. 38 group army. Last year, a similar visit was arranged to the guard division.

The ministry introduced the spokesperson system in May 2008 after the 8.0-magnitude Wenchuan earthquake, and launched its official website in August last year in an effort to help the media acquire more information about the once mysterious PLA.

Xinhua writer Tian Ying contributed to the story.

Source: Xinhua