China sends war movie clips to cell phones

Subscribers to China Unicom, the smaller of the country's two mobile telecom operators, are being offered the service for about $1 a month, the official Xinhua news agency said Tuesday.

"I believe it will be popular since we have so many military fans in China," it quoted company official Yu Peng as saying.

"We have more than 300,000 pictures of weapons and military figures in our database along with clips of hundreds of movies, such as Battle for Berlin, Normandy Invasion and Shang Ganling, a movie about the Korean War," he added.

The PLA was founded as the military arm of the Communist Party of China. Today, it is China's military.

Customers will also be able to get military news sent straight to their handsets from the army's own newspaper, the report said.

"It's not just about making money," Yu said. "By doing it, we are celebrating the PLA's 80th anniversary and, in the process, providing more healthy content through mobile phones."

The 80th anniversary falls on Wednesday.