The newly-established Garrison troops of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) for the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) has attracted wide attention from the public as all major Beijing-based newspapers published stories about the troops on November 10.

According to a Xinhua report carried by these newspapers, Major General Liu Yuejun, now commander of the Macao garrison troops, was authorized by the PLA headquarters earlier in the year to form the Macao Garrison troops in Zhuhai, a coastal city which borders Macao.

The garrison troops will have nearly 1,000 personnel mostly from infantry troops. There will also be a small number of Navy and Air Force officers.

One motorized infantry and one armored infantry company from the Hong Kong SAR have been chosen to join the Macao SAR Garrison troops. The former HK SAR Garrison soldiers were widely applauded for their meritorious performances in Hong Kong.

The Macao Garrison troops also include some other newly-formed troops, including a motorized infantry company once reviewed by the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong in 1949, an armored infantry company praised for its merits in engineering projects and anti- flooding battles, and a safe-keeping and reconnaissance company. Some its members come from a unit known as "the Sharp Sword of the South" and others from a unit that was among the first troops established in the Jinggang Mountain Revolutionary Base area in the late 1920s.

Many of the new troops members are noted for their professional skills and higher education background.

Major General He Xianshu, a former chief of the political department of the HK SAR Garrison is now the political commissar of the Macao Garrison.

Liu Yaping, head of a safe-keeping and reconnaissance squad, was chosen as the first sentry on July 1, 1997, when the HK SAR Garrison took over the barracks from British troops.

Major Li Ying, who has a master's degree in English, is the eighth in the HK SAR Garrison troops to have acquired the rights to practice law in Hong Kong. He is now spokesman for the Macao Garrison and also in charge of law and foreign affairs.

Wang Guofeng, a soldier who has tied sandbags weighing three kilograms to his legs, is one of the best trained in the garrison. His best result in a 400-meter obstacle race in one minute and 28 seconds.

Of the Macao Garrison officers, 86 percent are university or college graduates. Most of the garrison soldiers graduated from high schools. The average height of the men is 1.7 meters and that of the women, 1.65 meters.

As General Liu, the commander, puts it, although the Macao Garrison troops are small in number, they are responsive, alert and capable.

The city government of Zhuhai has attached great importance to the building of barracks for the garrison troops. It took merely 203 days for local contractors to complete the barracks, an project that would usually take three years.