News In Brief

China outlines plans to reorganize forces

China unveiled the draft of a new law Tuesday to revamp the armed forces and raise morale by increasing benefits and restoring the system of military ranks. Army Chief of Staff Yang Dezhi told the National People's Congress, the legislature, that the proposed law would improve the life of soldiers on active duty and combine the reserves and the militia into a pool of trained citizen-soldiers ready for action in case of war. He would also restore the system of ranks, which Mao Tse-tung considered too bourgeois and abolished in 1965.