Beijing, July 17 (PTI): China’s military today said it has conducted live-fire exercises in the remote mountainous Tibet region to test its strike capability on plateaus, amid the standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in the Doklam area in the Sikkim sector.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted the 11-hour long live-fire exercises at an altitude of 5,000 meters on the plateau in Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, aimed at improving the combat capability on such locations, the military said.
The exercise was conducted by a ground combat brigade of the PLA Tibet Regional Command this month and involved scenarios such as rapid deployment, multi-unit joint strike and anti-aircraft defense, state-run China Daily quoted a PLA press release as saying. The exercise effectively tested the brigade’s joint strike capability on plateaus, according to the press release.
The brigade that conducted the drills was from the PLA’s Tibet Military Command and is one of China’s two plateau mountain brigades. The PLA Tibet command guards the Line of Actual Control (LAC) of the India-China border along several sections connecting the mountainous Tibetan region.
According to the CCTV report, the brigade has long been stationed around the middle and lower reaches of the Brahmaputra (Yarlung Zangbo in Chinese) River which flows into India and Bangladesh. The brigade is responsible for frontline combat missions. The drills included the quick deployment of troops and different military units working together on joint attacks.
Video posted online showed soldiers using anti-tank grenades and missiles against bunkers and howitzers for artillery coverage.
Separately, Tibet’s mobile communication agency conducted a drill on July 10 in Lhasa, capital of Tibet, where members of the agency practiced setting up a temporary mobile network to secure communications in an emergency. Earlier reports said the PLA units exercised in Tibet with several modern weapon systems including a new light battle tank being manufactured by China.
Qin Zhen, executive editor of Ordnance Knowledge magazine, said that the recent exercises have displayed the strong combat capability of the PLA’s plateau units.
He said that in recent years the Chinese military developed a number of lightweight weapons such as a wheeled infantry fighting vehicle and a new light tank to meet requirements of mountain operations.
China and India have been engaged in a standoff in the Dokalam area in the Sikkim sector, where Indian troops stopped road construction by Chinese soldiers on June 16.
China claimed that they were constructing the road within their territory and has been demanding immediate pull-out of the Indian troops from the disputed Dokalam plateau.
New Delhi has expressed concern over the road building, apprehending that it may allow Chinese troops to cut India’s access to its northeastern states.
India has conveyed to the Chinese government that the road construction would represent a significant change of status quo with serious security implications for it.
Doka La is the Indian name for the region which Bhutan recognises as Dokalam, while China claims it as part of its Donglang region.
Of the 3,488-km-long India-China border from Jammu and Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, a 220-km section falls in Sikkim.
