The Zhurihe Training Base (), also called the Zhurihe Combined Tactics Training Base, is a People's Liberation Army (PLA) base in

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

, China, founded in 1957. The largest military base in China, Zhurihe covers , has its own hospital, and for over 60 years has hosted multiple mock training areas for conducting urban

war game A wargame is a strategy game in which two or more players command opposing armed forces in a realistic simulation of an armed conflict. Wargaming may be played for recreation, to train military officers in the art of strategic thinking, or to s ...

s. General Secretary and Chairman

Xi Jinping Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, ...

commemorated the 90th anniversary of the PLA with a

military parade A military parade is a formation of soldiers whose movement is restricted by close-order manoeuvering known as drilling or marching. The military parade is now almost entirely ceremonial, though soldiers from time immemorial up until the la ...

at Zhurihe. The PLA has called Zhurihe their "most modernized training base" and say it is the largest in Asia. Comparisons have been made between Zhurihe and

Fort Irwin Fort Irwin National Training Center (Fort Irwin NTC) is a major training area for the United States military in the Mojave Desert in northern San Bernardino County, California. Fort Irwin is at an average elevation of . It is located northeast o ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Zhurihe is home to the 81st Army Group. The base is overseen by the PLA's Beijing Military Area Command. The base features a variety of mock facilities including highways, an airstrip, a town center with buildings—one of which closely resembles the Presidential Office Building in

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

—and a near-replica of the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "'' ...

. Many of these structures were built between 2013 and 2015. In July 1997, the Central Military Commission designated Zhurihe to be modernized and turned into a training base for China. The PLA opened the base to foreign armed forces for the first time on August 25, 2003.

References

{{China-mil-stub Military installations of China Military education and training in China Inner Mongolia