By Mao Pengfei and Li Jiansu
KAMPOT, CAMBODIA, Mar. 14 (ChinaMil) -- The opening ceremony of China-Cambodia joint military training Golden Dragon - 2019 kicked off at the Shooting Range Training Field for the 70th Infantry Brigade of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) in Kampot Province’s Chum Kiri district, Cambodia on March 13, 2019.
General Vong Pisen, the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF), and Major General Feng Xiang, deputy chief of staff of the army under the Chinese PLA Southern Theater Command attended the ceremony, joined by 716 participants from both sides.
In his speech, Gen. Vong Pisen said that Cambodia and China are comprehensive strategic partners. The Golden Dragon serial joint exercises will help two militaries to improve their capacities, deepen cooperation and inherit friendship, and will certainly contribute to the peaceful development of the two countries and regional peace and stability.
Maj. Gen. Feng Xiang said that the Golden Dragon joint exercise is a brand of the bilateral military cooperation. The Chinese and Cambodian militaries will constantly enrich the content and expand the scope of the joint training, and jointly improve the level of exchanges and cooperation between both sides.
Li Ningya, military attaché of the Chinese Embassy in Cambodia, said that it is the third time for both armed forces to launch joint training and it serves as a concrete measure to implement the consensus reached by the high-level leaders of the two sides on strengthening pragmatic cooperation. Compared with the previous two exercises, “the size of the participating forces is grander, the joint operations are more prominent, the weapons and equipment are more diversified, and the training content is much richer,” he added.
Under the theme of joint anti-terrorism training and humanitarian rescue and aiming at promoting the two militaries’ abilities in counter-terrorism training and deepening the traditional friendship between the two militaries, the joint exercise will last until March 27.
Chinese participants mainly come from the army under the PLA Southern Theater Command and the PLA 74th Group Army. In total, there are 252 members from multiple military branches, including special operations troops, army aviation troops, engineer forces, artillery forces, and armored forces.