Xi Jinping wants ready soldiers and loyal generals

In the early hours of April 28th 1984, a young Chinese officer led an infantry regiment in an attack on Vietnamese forces embedded in the mountains on China’s southern border. The battle of Laoshan was among the bloodiest of the skirmishes that sputtered on for a decade after China’s four-week war with Vietnam in 1979—the most recent that Chinese forces have waged. Like the war, the battle ended with no clear victor. But it forged the reputation of the regimental commander, who almost four decades later has emerged as the most trusted military adviser to China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping.