IX. Accelerating the Modernization of National Defense and the Armed Forces

Building strong national defense and powerful armed forces that are commensurate with China's international standing and meet the needs of its security and development interests is a strategic task of China's modernization drive. China is faced with interwoven problems affecting its survival and development security as well as traditional and non-traditional security threats. To address these problems and threats, we must make major progress in modernizing national defense and the armed forces. We must, responding to China's core security needs and following the three-step development strategy for modernizing national defense and the armed forces, ensure both economic development and development of defense capabilities, intensify efforts to accomplish the dual historic tasks of military mechanization and full IT application, striving to basically complete military mechanization and make major progress in full military IT application by 2020.

To modernize national defense and the armed forces, we must follow the guidance of Mao Zedong's military thinking, Deng Xiaoping's thinking on enhancing our military capabilities in the new historical period, Jiang Zemin's thinking on strengthening our national defense and armed forces, and the Party's thinking on strengthening our national defense and armed forces under new conditions. We should act to meet the new requirements of China's national development and security strategies and ensure that the armed forces fully carry out their historic mission in the new stage in the new century. We should implement the military strategy of active defense for the new period, and enhance military strategic guidance as the times so require. We should attach great importance to maritime, space and cyberspace security. We should make active planning for the use of military forces in peacetime, expand and intensify military preparedness, and enhance the capability to accomplish a wide range of military tasks, the most important of which is to win local war in an information age.

We should follow the guideline of strengthening national defense and the armed forces in a scientific way, take faster change of the way of raising military combat effectiveness as a major task, fully enhance the revolutionary nature of the armed forces and ensure that they are modern and follow standard procedures in all operations. We must unwaveringly adhere to the principle of the Party's absolute leadership over the armed forces and continue to educate them in the system of theories of socialism with Chinese characteristics. We should constantly cultivate the core values of contemporary revolutionary service personnel, vigorously promote advanced military culture, and preserve the nature and the character of the military as the people's army. We should unswervingly pursue full IT application as the goal in achieving military modernization and step up this effort. We should strengthen the development of new- and high-technology weapons and equipment, speed up the complete development of modern logistics, train a new type of high-caliber military personnel in large numbers, intensively carry out military training under computerized conditions, and enhance integrated combat capability based on extensive IT application. We should increase efforts to run the armed forces with strict discipline and in accordance with the law, and raise their standardization to a new level.

We should closely follow the new global military revolution that is gathering pace, advance reform of our national defense and armed forces in a both active and prudent way, and deepen military transformation with Chinese characteristics. With innovative military theories taking the lead, we should enhance our capacity for innovation in defense-oriented research and industries, modernize the military organizational structure, and build a system of modern military forces with Chinese characteristics.

We should continue to follow a Chinese-style path that integrates the development of military and civilian sectors, combine efforts to make the country prosperous and the armed forces strong, and strengthen strategic planning, system building as well as related laws and regulations to boost the development of military and civilian sectors in an integrated way. We should speed up the building of a modern armed police force. We should raise public awareness of the importance of national defense and improve the capacity for national defense mobilization and the capability of our reserve forces. We should consolidate and increase unity between the military and the government and between the military and the civilians.

China pursues a national defense policy that is defensive in nature. Our endeavors to strengthen national defense aim to safeguard China's sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and ensure its peaceful development. China's armed forces have always been a staunch force upholding world peace and will continue to increase cooperation and mutual trust with the armed forces of other countries, participate in regional and international security affairs, and thus play an active role in international political and security fields.