With the completion of reducing 200,000 troops, China is to speed up the pace of modernizing its armed forces in the next five years and more, for self-defense and maintaining world peace.

Hu Jintao made the remarks on behalf of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in a keynote speech at the 17th CPC National Congress on Monday.

Hu said, "We must implement the military strategy for the new period, accelerate the revolution in military affairs with Chinese characteristics, ensure military preparedness, and enhance the military's capability to respond to various security threats and accomplish diverse military tasks.

"China follows a national defense policy that is defensive in nature, and it does not engage in arms race or pose a military threat to any other country. China opposes all forms of hegemonism and power politics and will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion.

We are determined to safeguard China's sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and make contributions to maintaining world peace," Hu pledged.

"Bearing in mind the overall strategic interests of national security and development, we must take both economic development and national defense into consideration and make our country prosperous and our armed forces powerful while building a moderately prosperous society in all respects," Hu said.

Hu stressed that China must always adhere to "the fundamental principle of the Party exercising absolute leadership over the armed forces and the fundamental purpose of the armed forces serving the people."

To attain the strategic objective of building computerized armed forces and winning IT-based warfare, Hu said China will accelerate the composite development of mechanization and computerization, carry out military training under IT-based conditions, intensify our efforts to train a new type of high- caliber military personnel in large numbers and change the mode of generating combat capabilities.

China will "enhance our capacity for independent innovation in R&D of weapons and equipment with better quality and cost- effectiveness," he said.

China will establish sound systems of weapons and equipment research and manufacturing, military personnel training and logistics that integrate military with civilian purposes and combine military efforts with civilian support, build the armed forces through diligence and thrift, and blaze a path of development with Chinese characteristics featuring military and civilian integration, according to Hu.

(Xinhua News Agency October 15, 2007)