By Guo Fengkuan, Nie Hongjie, Yang Mingyue and Xu Liye

BEIJING, Apr. 22 -- On the morning of April 17, boxes of fresh vegetables, fruits and meat were delivered to a brigade stationed in Tibet directly from a warehouse in the suburbs of Lhasa, capital city of China's Tibet Autonomous Region. Quartermaster Zeng Wang, together with his assistants, signed and received the raw food according to the acceptance criteria of each type.

“Most of the meat we ate before was frozen meat. Now, what we have is cold fresh products, much better in quality, except for seafood”, said Zeng Wang, who has stationed on the plateau for 14 years and witnessed the development and changes in the supply of non-staple food for plateau troops.

In the past, most of the non-staple food to the troops on the plateau were supplied in a “point-to-point” mode between relatively independent troops and suppliers from plain areas, featuring long supply cycle, substantial loss during long-distance transportation, and monotony in variety due to the constraints of various conditions. The troops had few choices as a result.

In recent years, the Logistic Support Department of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) has been committed to exploring the reform of the logistic support mode. They broke the limitations of the organizational system, concentrated the demand for non-staple food of all units in the same region, and organized the purchasement in a unified manner as one procurement entity.

At the same time, the CMC Logistic Support Department has adopted an APP named “Plateau Express Delivery”, through which the suppliers can put 11 categories (including fruits, vegetables, meat, aquatic products, seafood, dairy products, etc.) in a total of more than 530 types of non-staple food on the platform online.

The troops on the plateau can submit orders and demands online, and the supply platform would gather the orders in real-time, followed by the preparation and delivery to a distribution center by suppliers offline. At last, the distribution center acts to test quality and reserve samples, classify, pack and transport products via cold chain to ensure that fresh raw food can reach the plateau directly from the plain areas as soon as possible.

According to Zhao Yawei, director of the material supply division under the Logistic Support Department of the PLA Tibet Military Command, fresh pork from inland of China can be served for plateau troops within three days.