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OE Watch Commentary: As China focuses on becoming a leading military power, an important part of its agenda includes revamping the training and education system of its armed forces. The accompanying excerpted article talks about efforts to build up the military intelligence curriculum at China’s National University of Defense Technology’s (NUDT) International Relations College. NUDT is viewed as a top People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military academy located in Changsha, Hunan Province.
The article begins with a depiction of a battlefield situation training scenario, which is a part of the university’s curriculum. The course is entitled “Combined Handling and Assessment of Sea-Air Intelligence in Joint Operations.” It is said to be the fifth joint operations support course recently offered. Further into the article, the reader gains a better sense of the changing dynamics of China’s intelligence operations. As the PLA focuses more on joint operations, there is a growing emphasis on building more well rounded professionals in the intelligence field. Military intelligence is considered a national-level key course of study. With foreign language as a foundation and intelligence as the core, military training is “the pillar.”
There has also been an increased emphasis on developing joint operations support personnel who are specialized, but have many skills. NUDT has already added 14 new joint operations support courses, such as “Information sources for Battlefield Situation,” “Evaluations for Feedback for Joint Operations Reconnaissance,” and “Battlefield Imagery Reading and Assessment for Comprehensive Training.” End OE Watch Commentary (Hurst)
Like budding flowers basking in breeze after spring rain, the men quickly become forces of the three services. “The education path we have taken in the new era can be summed up as ‘ foreign languages as the foundation, intelligence as the core, and military [training] as the pillar.’”
“During the reforms, there emerged many forward-looking and forward-thinking designs. Therefore, what tomorrow’s battlefields most urgently need are joint operations support personnel who are specialized but with many skills.”
Military intelligence is a national-level key course of study. In this semester, just in this field, the college has already initiated in six specialty tracks 14 joint operations support courses such as “Information Sources for Battlefield Situations,” “Evaluations for Feedback for Joint Operations Reconnaissance,” “Battlefield Imagery Reading and Assessment for Comprehensive Training,” and others. They thus have greatly improved their teaching that “ focuses on new joint operations reforms and covers the entire process of joint operations support.