BEIJING: China showed off the growing sophistication of its defence industries on Friday by featuring its newest attack helicopters and main battle tanks at a multinational live-firing military exercise in the country’s north. State media said the new hardware performed to expectations in the “Peace Mission-2014” drill featuring more than 7,000 personnel from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzs­­­ tan and Tajikistan.

The exercise at Zhurihe, China’s largest and most modern training base in the vast grasslands of Inner Mongolia, was the culmination of a week of joint training under a regional grouping known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

The website of the Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper said the latest versions of the Type 99 main battle tank and the Z-10 and Z-19 attack helicopters were taking part for the first time in multinational exercises, in which actual ammunition was being used.

China’s air force earlier announced it had deployed a new type of armed drone in the exercises, and that it had carried out a successful missile attack on a command vehicle.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2014