Chinese Military Must Improve to "Win High-Tech Regional Wars"

This is exactly what the Pentagon wrote about a couple of weeks ago. China is doing everything short of military invasion to try to pull Taiwan into communist China. And just in case war does break out, China must be prepared to deal with the US. Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao has called on the military to improve its ability to "win high-tech regional wars", state media said on Monday, less than two weeks before arch rival Taiwan heads to the polls.

"We must intensify our effort to strengthen national defense and step up army building while going all out for economic, political, cultural and social development," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Hu as telling military officers.

"We must aim at improving the capability to win high-tech regional wars and keep enhancing the ability of the military to respond to security threats and accomplish a diverse array of military tasks," Hu said, speaking on the sidelines of the annual meeting of parliament.

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he report made no mention of Taiwan, the self-ruled island China regards as its own and which Chinese officials have never renounced the use of force to bring under Beijing's control.

Taiwan goes to the polls on March 22 to choose a new president to replace Chen Shui-bian, whose pro-independence sympathies have angered China.

China's response to the election campaign has been relatively muted, compared with 1996 when it lobbed missiles into the Taiwan Strait in an attempt to scare people into not voting for Lee Teng-hui, who it suspected of having a pro-independence agenda.

Lee won in a landslide.

Hu added that "the modernization of the armed forces should be aimed at combat readiness, and military training should be conditioned to the age of information technology", Xinhua paraphrased him as saying.