China's Central Military Commission (CMC) will terminate all paid services provided by the military by the end of 2018, with 94 percent of military paid service projects already ended, People's Liberation Army (PLA) Daily reported Tuesday.
The unnamed military official said at a press conference that military paid services in 12 fields out of 15 have been terminated, according to the PLA Daily on Tuesday.
The 15 fields are nursery education, press and publications, culture and sports, communications, personnel training, barracks projects, storage and transportation, militia armament repair, repair technology, driver instruction, real estate rentals, agricultural products, accommodation services, medical care and scientific research.
The CMC is currently winding up projects in the fields of real estate rentals, agricultural products and accommodation services, and projects in the other 12 fields have already ended, the official said.
To terminate all paid services provided by the military is to better focus on military capability building, and to concentrate assets on the work to strengthen army building and military preparedness, the official noted.
In February 2016, the CMC issued a circular urging the end to all paid services by the armed forces and the armed police, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
"The armed forces and armed police have not been allowed to run a business since 1998, but were permitted to use surplus resources to provide paid services to the civilian in the 15 fields, as China's service industry was weak at the time," Jiang Luming, professor at the National University of Defense Technology, told Xinhua.
However, in recent years, with the development of the market economy, and imperfections in the paid services system, corruption cases were exposed in the military due to such services.
Jiang said that the principle of paid services was not in line with the military personnel's spirit of devotion.
