China's Xi Jinping calls for 'more quickly elevating' armed forces

China's leader Xi Jinping has called for “more quickly elevating the armed forces to world-class standards.”

China’s leader Xi Jinping has called for “more quickly elevating the armed forces to world-class standards,” in a speech days after he warned the country was threatened by a U.S.-led campaign of “containment, encirclement, and suppression of China.”

China must maximise its “national strategic capabilities” in a bid to “systematically upgrade the country’s overall strength to cope with strategic risks, safeguard strategic interests and realise strategic objectives,” Mr. Xi said on March 8.

His remarks to delegates in the ceremonial Parliament representing the People's Liberation Army, the military wing of the ruling Communist Party, and the paramilitary People's Armed Police, were carried by the official Xinhua News Agency.

Mr. Xi made a series of calls to accelerate the build-up of self-reliance in science and technology, bolster strategic capabilities in emergency fields, make industrial and supply chains more resilient, and make national reserves “more capable of safeguarding national security.”

The program laid out by Mr. Xi dovetails with a number of national strategies already underway, including the “Made in China 2025” campaign to make China dominant in 10 key fields from integrated circuits to aerospace, and a decades-old campaign for civilian-military integration in the economy.

Mr. Xi also mentioned the need for “achieving the goals for the centenary of the PLA in 2027,” a date by which, according to some U.S. observers, China intends to have the capability of conquering self-governing Taiwan, an American ally, by military means.

China has defined the centenary goals in mostly vague terms, such as greater "informatisation" and raising the PLA to “world-class standards."