Special report: Marking 80th anniversary of PLA

    JINAN, August, 2 (Xinhua) -- Anti-chemical soldiers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) are playing a greater role as China are confronted with more and more chemical and radioactive leakages and other accidents, a senior PLA colonel said.

    "China, though free of chemical weapons, has a lot of civilian chemical plants and chemical bombs abandoned by foreign countries in wartime," said Colonel Xu Xingtian with the Jinan Military Area, also member of an expert panel from the Shandong Environmental Protection Bureau.

    "That's why in peacetime the anti-chemical soldiers are playing a bigger and bigger role in safety precautions and emergency rescues," he told Xinhua.

    China is a member state of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

    PLA statistics show there are currently 39,330 anti-chemical soldiers in the Chinese army, accounting for 1.71 percent of the total armed forces. The number of anti-chemical troops have kept rising over the past several decades despite the overall size of the armed forces in China has been drastically slashed -- to 2.3 million today.

    Since it was established in 1960, the anti-chemical regiment of Jinan Military Area has taken part in emergency rescue procedures for 17 major chemical accidents - including toxic gas leakages caused by tanker accidents and explosions at chemical plants. They have saved the lives of more than 100 people and tens of millions of yuan, Xu said.

    "The provinces of Shandong and Henan have a total of 50 large and medium sized chemical plants, all of which are under our protection," said Zhang Bo, a member of the anti-chemical regiment.

    "In May 2005, a group of my fellow soldiers spent two days at a construction site in Jinan removing an unexploded chemical bomb left by the Japanese troops more than 50 years ago," said Zhang.

    Zhang's regiment also carry out more routine tasks. In March this year, 20 soldiers were sent to a hospital in Jinan, Shandong, to dispose of the radioactive waste generated by the hospital updating its medical instruments.

    To prevent the spread of SARS in 2003, soldiers from the regiment disinfected the streets, schools and villages in Jinan for six months.

    "In peacetime our training centers focus on improving defense capabilities and even in wartime, our mission would be defending soldiers and civilians against atomic, biological and chemical weapons," said Shu Qidong, an officer with the regiment's political department.