Through 80 years of development amid concerns of generations of CPC leadership, a training brigade of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army set up in 1927 by Mao Zedong, has turned out be China's prestigious University of National Defense.

Top Chinese leaders Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and current General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Hu Jintao have all along paid great attention to the development of the University of National Defense.

Xinhua News Agency published a lengthy article on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary of the founding of the University of National Defense of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLAUND), and reviewed the enormous concerns given by the top Chinese leaders to the development of the PLAUND since the very beginning.

In October of 1927, Mao led an uprising army to arrive at the Mount Jinggang area, in east China's Jiangxi Province, to lay the foundation for the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, the predecessor of the PLA. One month later, Mao set up the Army's first training brigade, which was regarded as the beginning of the PLAUND.

In the following years, various kinds of military schools and academies of the CPC-led Red Army were established. In May 1936, the Chinese People's Anti-Japanese Invasion Red Army University was set up.

Since 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, the PLA has set up a number of military academies, including the PLA Military Academy in 1951, the PLA Logistic Academy in 1952, and the PLA Political Academy in 1954.

During the catastrophic Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), all the military academies were abolished and they were merged into a new one, the PLA Military and Political University (PLAMPU).

In August 1977, when Deng Xiaoping took over the power once again, the PLAMPU was dismantled and the previous military, political and logistic academies were resumed.

In March 1985, the Central Military Commission decided to combine the three academies into the current PLAUND. Now, it has become the think-tank of the whole Army.

Between January 1989 and May 1990, Jiang Zemin visited the PLAUND twice, and he urged the top military university to display tradition, to reform and innovate, so as to build into a model for the whole Army.

Since then, the PLAUND has sent its teachers and researchers to visit and study in over 30 foreign countries, while it has received over 12,000 visitors from over 90 countries.

So far, the PLAUND has brought up 231 doctorate holders and 1,581 masters, and over 500 of them have become regiment and division leaders in the Army.

In October of 2005 and July of 2006, Hu Jintao visited the PLAUND twice, and he urged it to keep pace with the times and try to become a world-class military university. He called for greater efforts to make Army officers more capable of commanding joint troops from the Air Force, the Navy and Land Army.

The university has now become the country's and the Army's important base for military education, theory innovation, consultation for decision making, education on national defense, and exchange of military personnel between China and foreign countries.

(Xinhua News Agency, December 4, 2007)