PLA Medals and Ribbons

I had heard about changes being planned for the military honors system, but don't know much about what's planned.

Chinese medals forum:

luhai, thanks for that link ! but now can you translate one of those panels mainly panel #4 for the years in service ribbons. So basically they can have more than one of each, how the heck does that work, so it would be like adding and subtracting years of service like roman numerous ? Can't they also wear their "real" ribbons with these time in service ribbons ?

Which order of dress is this he is wearing ?, I see senior officers still wearing this style at meetings !

year of service ribbons are awarded for 1 , 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 years of service. Also from the example 1, 2, 3, 4 service ribbon with worn twice, and a white ribbon are give for "decorative reasons" once if award ribbon are give, the repeat and decorative ribbons are replaced with an award ribbon.

that dress is the 87 style uniform, which is last uniform before military uniforms starts to go western. It gradually replaces and change from 1999 before be completely replaces in 2007. However, there are still people, mostly retired officer or just old school officers, that wore them.

Here are some pic

luhai: thank you for trying to explaining it to me , but I am not 100% clear on how to dicypher those ribbons yet ! It is too complicated for just showing years of service ...LoL

Luhai, is there a chart of PLA shoulder insignia for all branches?

edit: it's a bit dated, but it's at least comprehensive. PLA likes to change uniform way too often these days, it's hard to keep track (especially when people sometime wear older uniforms), but the general outlines are still the same.

actually, there is one medal above the 1st(一等功)honor award. It was only given during the war time and its called special honor award(特种功）， people were usually given that after they died in battle as a matyr of the PLA. Very few people have obtained that award, and people who did get the ward did stuff like :burned to death slowly in order not reveal PLA location in korea, blocking heavy machine gun hole of a bunker with their own body to buy time for troop advancement, blowing self up with a broken leg and arm during battle up along with a group of enemy soldiers etc.

PLA approved new medals and ribbons, all these new ribbon would probably replace the years of service ribbons as well as rank ribbon since soon there will be enough service and achievement ribbon for soldier to take their place. I always thought those year of service and rank ribbon are only an placeholder for actual awards ribbons.

Overview

Heroes Medal, 1st, 2nd class

Merit Medal, 1st, 2nd, 3rd class

Defense Services Medal

Defense of Nation and Borders Medal

Dedication to Defense Medal

Combat Mission Medal

Important Mission Medal

Peace Mission Medal





In addition it appears that commemorative medal and ribbon specific to mission and exercises were also struck. This one is for Joint exercises "Peace Mission 2005" with Russia.