Word: pla
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last month, delegations from the naval fleets of 14 nations met at the Chinese port of Qingdao to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLA-Navy). It was a chummy affair of joint exercises and processions at sea, overseen by white-clad officers in full regalia. In a speech there, Chinese president Hu Jintao trumpeted his country's emergence as a budding maritime power, while assuring foreign observers that China "would never seek hegemony, nor would it turn to arms races with other nations." Instead, Hu claimed, the retooled and expanding Chinese...
...China's cuddly rhetoric has seduced few. In 2008, Beijing's annual military budget increased by almost 20% to $60 billion, according to official figures, though the Pentagon estimates that number could actually be closer to $150 billion. Its most recent report on the PLA warned grimly of China's ability to "develop and field disruptive military technologies" - tactics which the Pentagon thinks will change "regional military balances and... have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific." China's strategic interests now rim most of the world's continents and it remains embroiled in lingering territorial disputes with its neighbors. Though publicly...
...Nepal army today is the only significant opposition to the Maoist takeover of Nepal," says retired Major General Dipankar Banerjee, director of the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. "The new government wants to get greater influence over the army." (See pictures inside Nepal's former PLA camps...
...Rookmangud Katawal, has a reputation for being a strident royalist and Maoist baiter. Katawal had been adopted by Mahendra, the father of King Gyanendra, whom the Maoists fought hard to bring down in their aim to abolish the monarchy. The army chief has long resisted the induction of the PLA into the Nepal army, and he courted trouble last November by beginning recruitment of 3,000 new soldiers before any former PLA guerrillas had been folded in - a move made without permission from the Ministry of Defense and against the provisions of the peace agreement. Katawal also refused to retire...
...that, however, the end of this dramatic series of events has left the Maoist leader facing the ire of his own ranks, who are getting edgy after being corralled into U.N.-monitored encampments around the country since they began their surrender over 2½ years ago. Nearly 20,000 PLA fighters have been verified by the U.N. and are ready to be inducted into the army if they meet the eligibility criteria. But that process has yet to begin, a stall that some have attributed to the opposition of the army chief and the Nepali Congress. "The fact is that...