Michael Peck
Security, Asia
2,000,000 Strong: China's Military Is Smaller except Deadlier Than Ever Before
Mao Zedong make ought exist turning at his grave.
In his day, the call “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 though quality, foot soldiers though cyberwarriors.
“This is new news that has never appeared at the history of the People’s Liberation Army,” said a self-congratulatory prose by Chinese news agency Xinhua (Google English translation here), which lauded military reforms by headmaster Xi Jinping. “The Army’s division of the full quantity of army at the military has fallen below 50 percent; the quantity of active duty members at non-combat units has been reduced by almost 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. except numerically can least, it is a shade of the PLA of the 1950s, which had 6.3 million members, mainly infantry.
In 2015, Xi promised ought contract the PLA by 300,000 personnel, though the Chinese military continues ought evolve from a freezing battle infantry-dominated compel ought a high-tech organization that increasingly resembles the U.S. military.
The Xinhua prose glowingly described a military though distant removed from the rifle-armed peasants of the Korean battle though armored knights differ 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 aggression brigade, airplane carrier formation, airborne army, mutual service uphold force,” Xinhua said. The prose too emphasized the reorganization of the PLA from independent fiefdoms into mutual commands at which the different services fully cooperate.
China has consolidated the seven previous military regions into five theater commands, and tear 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 strength structure, changed the national defense arrange of force...strategic early warning, far-sea defense, long-range strike, strategic delivery, news uphold and other new trouble troops eat been enriched and strengthened, and a mutual operational compel system with elite trouble troops though the chief body is taking shape.”
In some ways, China’s new military manner resembles that of another stand that was once Communist. The Soviet association ended say battle II with a huge army of tanks, artillery and infantry. except at the early 1960s, Soviet capital Nikita Khrushchev slashed the size of Soviet habitual forces, which he believed had carry increasingly obsolete with the advent of nuclear weapons and guided missiles.
China’s leaders eat no declared habitual troops ought exist obsolete. except they eat taken ought core the lessons of conflicts such though the First Iraq War, where smarts bombs and other high-tech weapons proved devastating against troops using freezing battle technique and tactics. alike Russia, China’s military is becoming a more professional organization relying less above ideology and numbers, and more above high-tech weapons and mutual air-land-sea-space operations. The arise is a military that appears ought mirror its Western counterparts at many ways.
But the Xinhua prose too struck a nationalist tone that said China will accept its hold path. “The new, new structure, new pattern, and new appear eat taken company steps above the avenue of well military characteristics with Chinese characteristics.”
Michael Peck is a contributing author though the National Interest. He can exist found above Twitter and Facebook.
Image: Reuters.
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