Amid Rising Tensions With India, China Says It Has Tested A New Tank In Tibet

As tensions rise along the India-China border in Sikkim, over Beijing’s latest attempt to build a road criss-crossing territory controlled by Bhutan near the Siliguri Corridor, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has said that it has tested a new Main Battle Tank (MBT) in Tibet.

“Recently, a new-type of tank has undertaken trials on the Tibet Plateau. The trials were aimed to test the tank’s performance and are not targeted at any country,” a senior PLA spokesperson, Colonel Wu Qian, said on Wednesday, responding to a question posed to him during the daily briefing. Most questions posed to PLA spokespersons at the Chinese Defence Ministry's regular press conference, it is believed, are planted to convey messages to the adversary.

The tank in question here could be the 35-tonne MBT seen during a recent military exercise conducted by a mechanised infantry brigade under the PLA’s Tibet Military Command based on the Tibet Plateau.

Although a lot is not known about the tank, Franz-Stefan Gady of The Diplomat suggests that the PLA spokesperson could have been referring to the ZTQ light tank, pictures of which first emerged in 2010. However, if the tank has been inducted into the PLA or not remains unclear.

The export variant of the tank, designated VT-5, is reportedly armed with a 105-millimetre gun and is capable of firing laser-guided anti-tank missiles.