On February 10th, President Xi Jinping, in his capacity as General Secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission, carried out a nationwide video inspection of the People's Liberation Army from the August 1 Building in Beijing. The remote check covered frontline readiness and ongoing missions across multiple services, and Xi extended New Year greetings and personal encouragement to PLA officers and enlisted personnel, as well as to armed police, military civilian staff, reservists and militia.
The units that reported through the video link ranged from a second battalion of an army brigade and the naval vessel Anhui to aviation and rocket-force brigades, plus formations from military space, cyberspace, information support, logistics and a People’s Armed Police detachment. The breadth of participants underscores Beijing’s continuing emphasis on joint operations and the integration of traditional and emerging domains of warfare such as space and cyberspace.
As an annual ritual, a pre‑holiday inspection serves several domestic and strategic functions. Domestically it reinforces personal loyalty to the party leadership and reassures service members and their families that the top brass is attentive to troop welfare and morale ahead of the Lunar New Year. Strategically, the publicized review functions as a signal—both to domestic audiences and external rivals—that the PLA is maintaining readiness across a full spectrum of capabilities.
The use of a video conference format is noteworthy in itself: it highlights the leadership’s emphasis on real‑time command-and-control and the ability to oversee dispersed, technologically sophisticated forces without being physically present. That format also allows the central leadership to display oversight of high‑value, sensitive formations such as space and cyber units while controlling the optics of the interaction.
Taken together, the visit reinforces patterns visible over the past decade: a continued drive to professionalize and modernize the PLA, to normalize the party’s direct role in military affairs, and to project an image of unified, cross‑domain military preparedness. For international observers, the message is less about an immediate escalation and more about steady acceleration of capability integration and political control ahead of whatever operational demands China anticipates in the near term.