Romania eyes to strengthen military ties with China

At the invitation of Doru Costea, Romanian ambassador to China, reporters with the PLA Daily visited to the Romanian Embassy in China on the eve of the Romanian Army Day, which falls on October 25, 2012, where Ambassador Costea and Antonio Marinescu, Romanian military attaché to China, received interviews given by PLA Daily reporters and talked about their impressions of China and the relations between the two countries and the two militaries.

While speaking of the military-to-military relations between Romania and China, Antonio expected that "China and Romania would strengthen their bilateral military cooperation in more fields".

Antonio is closely connected with the Chinese military. "I ever learnt Chinese at the PLA University of Foreign Languages for four years, and also visited Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province," he said. "When getting along with Chinese friends, I feel their friendliness and modesty. Wherever we run into trouble, we would get sincere help from Chinese friends!" he added.

Antonio was very excited when talking about the development of relations between the two militaries in the past ten years. He said that Aurel Popa, Chief of the Romanian Naval Staff, visited China last year and met with Liang Guanglie, Minister of National Defense of the People's Republic of China (PRC), and Wu Shengli, commander of the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), in Beijing. Before the meeting, the mountain troops of the two militaries staged two joint trainings coded the "Friendship Action" in 2009 and 2010 respectively, in which they exchanged training experience with each other and improved their capability for carrying out joint operations. Furthermore, this year, the frigate "Yantai" of the 11th escort taskforce under the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) made a five-day goodwill visit to the port city of Constanta, on the Black Sea from July 31 to August 4, during the visit, the navies of China and Romania conducted multi-level friendly exchanges.

What's more, the friendship and cooperation between the two militaries are also reflected in other aspects. For example, after the devastating earthquake hit Wenchuan on May 12, 2008, Romania immediately offered disaster relief materials worth US$860,000 to the earthquake-stricken area, of which US$550,000 worth of materials were flied to the disaster area by a special plane of the Romanian Air Force.

"In the past ten years, the Romanian military has constantly enhanced its capabilities and further improved its flexibility, maneuverability, sustainability and modularized rapid deployment capability, while the Chinese military has played an important role in such fields as international peacekeeping operations, emergency rescue and disaster relief actions and escort in the Gulf of Aden," said Antonio, adding that, "We appreciate the outstanding performances, professional competencies and dedication of the Chinese military, and hope that the two militaries will strengthen bilateral cooperation in more fields."