By Wang Zhijun and He Kelin

BEIJING, Nov. 25 -- The opening ceremony of the Regiment-level Command Training Course on Defense Mobilization was held at the College of Joint Operations of the Chinese PLA National Defence University (NDU) on November 15. This was the first training course of its kind that was hosted by a military academy.

The training course was aimed to make the leading officers in the defense mobilization system more capable of performing their duties, according to Yao Hongxing, deputy dean of the College of Joint Operations.

It is learnt that the training course has 45 trainees, all of whom are front-line commanding officers from provincial military commands (or garrison commands) and have worked on regiment-level positions for more than two years. The two-month-long training course will cultivate commanding officers with strategic thinking and joint operations capabilities, who are competent enough to be division-level leading officers in China’s defense mobilization system.

“There are many practical issues in China’s national defense mobilization work that have to be resolved urgently, such as how to tap the mobilization potential better and how to make breakthroughs in developing new-type militia. The training course provides a good opportunity for study and exchanges,” said trainee LiaoXuandong, director of the Political Work Department of the PLAYinchuan Garrison Command in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.