BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping has assumed a more direct role over the country’s powerful armed forces as head of its increasingly important joint operations, displaying both his strong personal authority and China’s determination to defend its interests.

The move to make Xi commander in chief of the military’s Joint Operations Command Centre bolsters his status as China’s most powerful leader in decades and comes at a time when Beijing is becoming increasingly bold in its territorial assertions, despite a growing pushback from Washington and others.

Xi already enjoys special influence with the armed forces, largely because his muscular foreign policy is popular among Chinese nationalists and the defence establishment.

That’s especially true in the disputed South China Sea, which China claims virtually in its entirety and where it has constructed airfields on former coral reefs and sought to limit the US Navy’s ability to operate in the area.

Xi has remained resolute in that approach, although it has been blamed for raising tensions with China’s Southeast Asian neighbours and has prompted the US to devote more resources to Asia and strengthen its cooperation with traditional allies and even former foe Vietnam.

Xi visited the Joint Operations Command Centre — reportedly located underground in the western outskirts of Beijing — on Wednesday and said officers need to prepare for conflicts and effectively handle “all sorts of emergencies,” state media reported on Thursday.

Xi was shown publicly for the first time in camouflage battle dress with the joint centre’s insignia, rather than the featureless olive drab attire he usually wears when acting in his capacity as chairman of the Communist Party commission that oversees the 2.3 million-member People’s Liberation Army , the world’s largest standing armed forces.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2016