"The entire army needs to strengthen its performance so as to do a good job of ensuring a good start to the 14th Five-Year Plan, and of celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the party," Xi told People's Liberation Army (PLA) and People's Armed Police (PAP) leaders, according to a Mar. 10 report in the official CCP newspaper, the People’s Daily.
Xi, who as head of the CCP's Central Military Commission (CMC), is commander-in-chief of all military forces, said the PLA had, during the course of 2020, "strengthened military training and preparations for war ... and basically met its targets for national defense and military development for 2020." He added: "We should persist in using combat to guide our work; step up preparations for war ... as well as developing a top-level strategic deterrent and joint forces combat system."
Wu Qiang, a former politics lecturer at Beijing's Tsinghua University, said Xi is likely planning to make a definite move to annex, or, in the CCP's terminology, "unify with," the democratic island of Taiwan in the next five years.
