Pioneering PLA unit vows to maintain its long traditions

TIMELINE

1927: Red Company One sets up the PLA's first company-level branch of the Communist Party of China when Chairman Mao Zedong establishes it and admits six members into the CPC.

1935: Mao orders the company to take charge of security work at the historic Zunyi Meeting in Zunyi, Guizhou province. The meeting establishes a new leadership of the CPC Central Committee, as represented by Mao, and saves the Red Army and the Party from destruction at a critical juncture.

1937: The company helps defeat the elite troops of the Imperial Japanese Army at the Battle of Pingxingguan in Shanxi province.

1997: Red Company One is equipped with a 2 A wheeled infantry vehicle, becoming one of the PLA's first light-mechanized infantry companies.

2008 and 1998: The unit undertakes rescue and relief work in the wake of extreme flooding in the Yangtze River Basin in 1998 and after the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Sichuan province in 2008.

2017 and 2015: The company's soldiers are sent to South Sudan as part of China's third and first batches of peacekeeping infantry battalions in UN missions in the African country.

2019, 2009 and 1999: Red Company One takes part in three National Day military parades in Beijing, marking the 70th, 60th and 50th anniversaries of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

2021: The unit is granted the title "Role Model of the Times" by the publicity department of the CPC Central Committee.