Michael Peck
Security, Asia
2,000,000 Strong: China's Military Is Smaller besides Deadlier Than Ever Before
Mao Zedong have to be turning at his grave.
In his day, the title “People’s Liberation Army” conjured images of hordes of soldiers overwhelming their enemies with abrupt numbers and Communist fervor.
Not anymore. China’s military is trading quantity because quality, foot soldiers because cyberwarriors.
“This is new news that has never appeared at the history of the People’s Liberation Army,” said a self-congratulatory essay by Chinese information agency Xinhua (Google English translation here), which lauded military reforms by principal Xi Jinping. “The Army’s part of the total quantity of army at the military has fallen under 50 percent; the quantity of active obligation members at non-combat units has been reduced by about half, and the quantity of officers has decreased by 30 percent.”
With 2 million members, the PLA (which includes the Army, Navy, stand Force, Strategic Rocket Forces, and the cyberwarriors of the Strategic uphold Force) is however the largest armed force. besides numerically at least, it is a shade of the PLA of the 1950s, which had 6.3 million members, largely infantry.
In 2015, Xi promised to condense the PLA by 300,000 personnel, because the Chinese military continues to evolve from a cool combat infantry-dominated compel to a high-tech organization that increasingly resembles the U.S. military.
The Xinhua essay glowingly described a military because distant removed from the rifle-armed peasants of the Korean combat because armored knights disagree from an Abrams tank. It spoke of H-6K bombers flying deep into the Pacific, new electric jamming systems and long-range artillery.
“These are new condition that has never appeared at the history of the People's Army: sham [training] brigade, stand invasion brigade, airplane carrier formation, airborne army, joint service uphold force,” Xinhua said. The essay too emphasized the reorganization of the PLA from independent fiefdoms into joint commands at which the different services fully cooperate.
China has consolidated the seven prior military regions into five theater commands, and rip four PLA headquarters into 15 units. “After the adjustment, our army was more capable, the structure was more optimized, and it was more scientific,” Xinhua said. “It fundamentally changed the long-term land-based force structure, changed the national defense arrange of force...strategic early warning, far-sea defense, long-range strike, strategic delivery, news uphold and other new fight army dine been enriched and strengthened, and a joint operational compel system with elite fight army because the chief body is taking shape.”
In some ways, China’s new military means resembles that of another stand that was once Communist. The Soviet club ended world combat II with a huge army of tanks, artillery and infantry. besides at the early 1960s, Soviet chief Nikita Khrushchev slashed the size of Soviet conventional forces, which he believed had become increasingly obsolete with the advent of nuclear weapons and guided missiles.
China’s leaders dine no declared conventional army to be obsolete. besides they dine taken to middle the lessons of conflicts such because the First Iraq War, where smarts bombs and other high-tech weapons proved devastating against army using cool combat technique and tactics. though Russia, China’s military is becoming a more professional organization relying less can ideology and numbers, and more can high-tech weapons and joint air-land-sea-space operations. The originate is a military that appears to mirror its Western counterparts at many ways.
But the Xinhua essay too struck a nationalist tone that said China will receive its have path. “The new, new structure, new pattern, and new emerge dine taken company steps can the path of robust military characteristics with Chinese characteristics.”
Michael Peck is a contributing author because the National Interest. He can be upright can Twitter and Facebook.
Image: Reuters.
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