Xi Jinping has told the People\u2019s Liberation Army to \u201cfocus all its energy on fighting\u201d in preparation for war, a Chinese Communist party mouthpiece has reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pictures of Xi, who recently secured a third term as party leader, in his army uniform during a visit to a command centre featured prominently on the front page of the People\u2019s Daily on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Xi said the army must \u201ccomprehensively strengthen military training in preparation for war\u201d, having warned at a recent party congress of \u201cdangerous storms\u201d on the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFocus all [your] energy on fighting, work hard on fighting and improve [your] capability to win,\u201d he was quoted as saying. The army must also \u201cresolutely defend national sovereignty and national security\u201d as China was in an \u201cunstable and uncertain\u201d security situation, he reportedly said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Xi also ordered the army to focus on war preparation in 2013, soon after he took power, and again in 2017, political analysts say he has markedly stepped up his rhetoric this time. In a similar visit to the command centre in 2016, he told officers to be \u201cloyal\u201d and \u201cresourceful\u201d in fighting and \u201ccourageous and capable of winning wars\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe is sending a message to the United States and Taiwan,\u201d said Willy Lam, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation. Although China\u2019s military strength was not yet at par with the US, Xi\u2019s decision-making was not always based on rational calculation, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Xi made a veiled attack on the US\u2019s increasingly explicit support for Taipei at the 20th party congress, which concluded in Beijing last month, blaming \u201cforeign interference\u201d for exacerbating tensions. Xi sees seizing Taiwan as a key part of his legacy and said in his opening speech at the congress: \u201cWe will never promise to renounce the use of force.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Could Xi follow Putin’s example and try to annex Taiwan? explainer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joe Biden has repeatedly pledged that the US would defend Taiwan if it was attacked. After the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan in August, the People\u2019s Liberation Army reportedly moved several warships and planes near to the median line, an unofficial border between China and Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Xi in recent months has used increasingly aggressive tones to urge his cadres to \u201cdare to struggle\u201d and boost their \u201cfighting spirit\u201d to defend national interests in a hostile political environment. In his opening speech at the party congress, he used the word\u00a0douzheng<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cstruggle\u201d) 17 times, which harked back to Mao Zedong\u2019s emphasis on \u201cclass struggle\u201d and combat against foreign, imperialist influence, and he used the word for \u201csecurity\u201d about 50 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This week a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson criticised the UK trade minister Greg Hands\u2019 visit to Taiwan and told the British government to \u201ccease sending wrong signals to separatist forces for Taiwan independence\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Xi Jinping has told the People\u2019s Liberation Army to \u201cfocus all its energy on fighting\u201d in preparation for war, a Chinese Communist party mouthpiece has reported. Pictures of Xi, who recently secured a third term as party leader, in his army uniform during a visit to a command centre featured prominently on the front page […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":27199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[8217,5304,6263,5178,9204,5268,731,7421,8982,8307,8263,6693,8485,5494,9196,2264,10769,8601,2471,9652,5572,2470,7693,7811,71,3457,5655,5618,9277,10041,12731,2711,12664,10329,9258,12605,5815,9262,6348,5251,13067,2354,3954,10415,594,7898,8327],"class_list":["post-27198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-army","tag-attack","tag-beijing","tag-biden","tag-border","tag-british","tag-british-government","tag-chinese","tag-combat","tag-communist","tag-communist-party","tag-congress","tag-ear","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-government","tag-house-speaker","tag-independence","tag-joe-biden","tag-mao-zedong","tag-military","tag-nancy-pelosi","tag-national-security","tag-pelosi","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-security","tag-soldiers","tag-speaker","tag-speech","tag-taipei","tag-taiwan","tag-third-term","tag-trade","tag-trade-minister","tag-uk","tag-uniform","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-war","tag-wars","tag-washington","tag-will","tag-work","tag-who","tag-xi","tag-xi-jinping"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52248,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27198\/revisions\/52248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}