Why doesn't China participate in six competitions of Int’l Army Games 2018?

Source
China Military Online
Editor
Li Jiayao
Time
2018-07-31 09:04:22

By Li Yun and Liu Jimei

BEIJING, July 29 (ChinaMil) -- China participated in a total of 22 competitions of the International Army Games 2018, among which, four were hosted in China and eighteen competitions were held in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

Recently, we learned from the Training and Administration Department of the China's Central Military Commission (CMC) the reasons why the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) didn't participate in the following six competitions: “Masters of Artillery Fire”, “Guardian of Order”, “True Friend”, “Falcon Hunting”, “Depth” and “Elbrus Ring” .

The main reasons for not participating in those above competitions include the mismatch between Chinese military’s active equipment and that of foreign militaries, and the lack of corresponding arms and specialties. According to the CMC Training and Administration Department, the selection of joining and hosting competitions is mainly based on the following three aspects.

First, competitions should be able to train the troops to the maximum extent. The focus is on participating in such major combat-related competitions for tank force, armored units, mountain troops, special operations units, marines, airborne troops and aviation units, and also those combat-support-related competitions for engineering, repair, communications, medical service and transportation forces.

Second, competitions should cover the PLA Army, Navy and Air Force. Although Russia has generally limited the number of competitions held in other countries, the number of competitions hosted by the China in this year is second only to that of Russia. Competitions hosted by China have now covered the PLA Army, Navy and Air force within two years.

Third, competitions should be close to actual combat. Improving combat effectiveness is the sole criterion for participating in the competitions or not. The Chinese military will not participate in the competitions where the contents are outdated, and which lack practicality and mainly focus on non-combat personnel, or in which the Chinese military does not have relevant equipment to take part.

According to reports, Russia has made significant changes in development concept and management methods of the International Army Games and they are reflected in the following two aspects:

The first is in the allocation of competitions. In previous years, Russia encouraged other countries to host competitions. However, host countries can only undertake a small number of competitions this year. Most of the important competitions such as “Tank Biathlon”, “Aviadarts” and “Airborne Platoon” can only be hosted by the Russian military, so as to highlight the prominent position of Russia as the sponsor country.

The second is in the formulation of rules. Based on the lessons learned in previous years, Russia has intensively issued a lot of rules and regulations to regulate the behavior of hosting and participating countries, through which, Russia has strengthened process control while standardizing the games.

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