The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

orists. Similar doctrinally sound force ratios will be
included in future combined exercises against other
theoretical terrorist threats.
The first low-level, small-scale military exercise
with Russian forces took place in January 2003. In an
unnamed, unpublicized training event, Chinese and
Russian border units carried out a small combined
exercise along the Heilongjiang border aimed at the
“apprehension of illegal border crossers.” 12 No further
details of the exercise are available, and one must
assume the PLA force involved was a Shenyang MR/
Heilongjiang Military District (MD) border defense
unit. 13 This exercise was so small, it was not included
in the list of nontraditional security exercises in the
2004 White Paper, nor was it included in other lists
of “Major PLA-related joint anti-terror military trainings”
published by PLA Daily because it was neither
“major” nor was it an “anti-terrorist” exercise. As will
be seen, other small-scale exercises along the border
also receive only minor press coverage.
Less than a year after “Exercise-01,” five SCO member
countries (Uzbekistan had recently been admitted
and did not participate) held the first multilateral SCO
combined anti-terror exercise, “Coalition-2003” (also
called “Joint-2003”), in the border areas near Ucharal,
Kazakhstan and Yining (Ili) in Xinjiang from August
6-12, 2003. In total, about 1,300 troops of all five
countries participated, with the majority, some 700
personnel, coming from China. The Xinjiang MD provided
PLA main force units composed of mechanized
infantry, tanks, artillery, helicopters, and SOF. Significantly,
consistent with PLA doctrine, PAP, civilian
special police forces, and militia personnel from the
Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps also participated.
14 Coalition forces responded to a scenario in
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