Border Defense Bureau of the National Defense Mobilization Department
The Border Defense Bureau of the National Defense Mobilization Bureau, "Border Defense Bureau" for short, is a Corps-grade organ of the Central Military Commission, responsible for the execution of border protection policy. It is based in Beijing.
History
Before the 2016, the "Border Defense Bureau" was a subordinate office of the People's Liberation Army General Staff Department's Operation Office, serving also as the administrative office of the National Committee on Border and Coastal Defense. In 1996, each province, prefecture, and county was required to set up its own border defense committee.With the 2015 reforms, the Border Defense Bureau was transferred to the National Defense Mobilization Department of the Central Military Commission.
Duties
The bureau is responsible for coordinating the defense of 22,000 kilometers of land borders, 18,000 kilometers of mainland coastline, and 14,000 kilometers of island coastline.Since 1996, China has been building an extensive system of facilities and monitoring systems to cover the entirety of this massive border. Since 2017, the military border is patrolled by the PLA, and the National Immigration Administration and General Administration of Customs are responsible for civilian border crossings. The BDB has coordinating duties for the military border defense units, and the civilian border protection entities.
The BDB is responsible for coordinating the construction, maintenance, and use of hundreds of border crossings, 30,000 km of border roads, 25,000 km of maritime border patrol tunnels, 7,000 km of fences, 3,000 border markers, watchtowers, and coastal installations; and it is responsible for the "digital border surveillance system", finished in 2009, that links thousands of surveillance sentry posts to 10 large-scale monitoring centers with over 10,000km of fiber optic cables. The BDB is also responsible for coordinating with local authorities to carry out the "five-in-one" border defense policy, and implementing "3D border protection and control systems" using new information technology to monitor the borders.