Special to WorldTribune.com

By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com

In its just-published White Paper on National Defense, China’s military establishment has revealed new information about the country’s secretive People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

For example, the Paper noted that the PLA’s ground forces consisted of 850,000 officers, while the navy and air force had strengths of respectively 235,000 and 398,000 personnel.

While confirming that China was gunning to become an “oceanic power,” the White Paper – China’s eighth – reiterated the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) administration’s “unshakable commitment to the road of peaceful development.”

What the White Paper and other official statements have not told the world, however, is that the captains of the country’s mammoth defense and aerospace industries have become a formidable political faction that is wielding a big influence on China’s foreign and defense policies.

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  China’s ‘Defense and Aerospace Faction’ is upwardly mobile with Gang of Princelings, Chinese Communist Party, People’s Liberation Army, White Paper on National Defense