For the first
time China has published data on the exact size of its military
services. The army has a personnel strength of 850,000, the navy has
235,000 and the air force 398,000 (including three airborne divisions,
air defense units and the strategic missiles in the Second Artillery
Force).
The Chinese also released the identification of the major army
units assigned to each of the seven MACs (Military Area Command):
Shenyang (16th, 39th and 40th Combined Corps), Beijing (27th, 38th and
65th Combined Corps), Lanzhou (21st and 47th Combined Corps), Jinan
(20th, 26th and 54th Combined Corps), Nanjing (1st, 12th and 31st
Combined Corps), Guangzhou (41st and 42nd Combined Corps) and Chengdu
(13th and 14th Combined Corps). Each Combined Corps contains two or
more divisions plus independent brigades. In peacetime these units are
used to back up the police in maintaining public order and standing
ready to help when there is a natural disaster. Some units with better equipment and training are designated
as available to quickly go to some border area to deal with an enemy
threat.
These revelations are part of a program to modernize the armed
forces. Most of this information was already available via open sources
and Internet chatter in China. There have been some similar public
relations efforts. Over the last three years, without any fanfare, China
has changed the names of its armed forces. Gone is the PLA (Peoples
Liberation Army) prefix for the navy (PLAN) and air force (PLAAF). It's
now just the Chinese Army, Chinese Navy, and Chinese Air Force. There
are also the Marines of the Chinese Navy. These changes can be seen on
patches worn by Chinese troops operating overseas. These badges show the
symbol representing the service, the name in Chinese and also in
English (the international language, especially in Asia).
Since there was no official announcement, there was no
explanation for why the old PLA prefix was dropped. The PLA was the
original Chinese Communist armed forces, founded in 1927 by the Chinese
Communist Party. This force was initially known as the Chinese Red Army.
After World War II the PLA name was formally adopted for all the
communist armed forces.
Because of this Communist Party connection, and continuing
Chinese efforts to merge with Taiwan (the last territory held by the
non-communist groups that lost the civil war in 1948 and took refuge on
Taiwan), it is believed the "Peoples Liberation" prefix was discarded to
please the "democratic" (as opposed to "communist") Chinese on Taiwan,
as well as all those non-communist neighbors.
For the last two decades China has been working to modernize
its armed forces and eliminating petty (and ineffective) secrecy and
name changes appears to be a minor, but important, part of that
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