On Lunar New Year’s Eve, while most of China gathered around family dinners and television, soldiers of an independent cavalry company stationed on the Yushu grasslands in Qinghai were tending horses and standing guard in temperatures near minus 20°C. The scene, recorded by state media, mixed human detail and military ritual: a squad leader named Ma Zhengming feeding night rations, riders tightening bridles beneath a cold moon, and a small contingent appearing briefly on the national Spring Festival broadcast to wish viewers well.
The account reads as a pastoral vignette — men and mares, ritual care and tidy stables — but it is also a deliberately staged public-relations moment. The unit belongs to the PLA’s 76th Group Army and is one of the few remaining cavalry companies in service, deployed at an average altitude above 4,000 metres. The broadcast and accompanying reportage underline both the endurance of traditional military practices and the PLA’s interest in projecting an image of vigilance and dedication in remote, ethnically sensitive borderlands.
Vignettes in the story are intimate: a commander postponing leave because he worries about the horses, a rider showing a laminated photograph of his wife with their mount, a newly arrived horse christened “Little Snow.” These moments humanise soldiers often portrayed only as instruments of state power, and they highlight the emotional bonds between troopers and animals that sustain operational readiness in terrain where wheeled and tracked vehicles are less practical.
Beyond sentiment, the piece signals continuity of purpose. The article lists the unit’s peacetime chores — grassland patrols, disaster relief and maintaining border stability — roles that tie routine garrison life to broader security functions. That continuity is important because cavalry units, though historically symbolic, retain practical utility at high altitudes and in difficult terrain where mobility, stealth and low logistical footprints matter.
The publicity value is evident. A brief appearance on the Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched televised event, reaches hundreds of millions and serves multiple domestic goals: reassuring families about troop welfare, bolstering the PLA’s patriotic credentials, and reiterating central control over far-flung frontiers. The story’s emphasis on minority soldiers — Tibetan names and family scenes — also advances a message of ethnic integration and local legitimacy in a sensitive region.
Strategically, the profile dovetails with longer-running PLA priorities: improving high-altitude readiness, preserving niche capabilities, and using human-centred narratives to strengthen morale and public support. Maintaining cavalry elements in the inventory may seem anachronistic to outside observers, but in plateaud zones their adaptability and low-tech resilience complement mechanised formations and air assets.
The report should therefore be read on two levels: as a human-interest chronicle of service and sacrifice, and as a calculated piece of military communication. It reassures domestic audiences that frontier garrisons are attentive and capable, while also reminding external observers that China invests in a diverse array of tactical solutions for difficult geography.
For international readers, the key takeaway is that the PLA continues to blend tradition with modernisation in ways calibrated to local conditions and political messaging. The Yushu cavalry company is both a working unit and a symbol — of endurance, of state presence in highland regions, and of the party’s effort to depict its armed forces as rooted in popular life rather than remote from it.