established and maintained inter-collegiate exchanges with their counterparts from more than 40 countries. Meanwhile, more than 10,000 foreign military personnel from over 130 countries have studied in Chinese military universities and colleges.
China's armed forces work to improve mechanisms for information release in order to comprehensively and objectively explain China's national defense and military development to domestic and international audiences. In April 2011, China's MND started to convene monthly press conferences to release important information on national defense and the military. Since 2012, multiple thematic press conferences have been held to brief on important events such as national defense and military reform and downsizing the PLA. The MND has organized multiple visits to and interviews with PLA units and academic institutions for nearly 100 domestic and foreign media. Since they were launched in May 2015, the official Weibo and WeChat accounts of the MND Information Office have attracted over 6 million followers.
Building a Regional Security Cooperation Architecture
In June 2001, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan co-founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The SCO has now grown into a new type of comprehensive regional cooperation organization covering the largest area and population in the world. The Shanghai Spirit featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diverse civilizations and pursuit of common development has come into being. With its commitment to building an SCO community with a shared future and developing a new model of international relations, the organization has made a new contribution to regional peace and development. In June 2017, the SCO expanded for the first time and admitted India and Pakistan as member states. In April 2018, China hosted the first SCO Defense Ministers' Meeting since the organization expanded its membership. The member states continue to strengthen defense and security exchanges and cooperation, including Peace Mission exercises, and Fanfare for Peace military tattoos, to further promote good-neighborliness and strategic mutual trust, increase military cultural exchanges, and enhance unity and friendship.
China actively supports the institutional development of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), advocates common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security in Asia, and plays an important role in building an Asian security cooperation architecture.
In the principles of openness, inclusiveness and pragmatic cooperation, China actively participates in multilateral dialogues and cooperation mechanisms including the ADMM-Plus, ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Shangri-La Dialogue, Jakarta International Defense Dialogue and Western Pacific Naval Symposium, regularly holds China-ASEAN defense ministers' informal meetings, and proposes and
