Chinese armor (Photo : Getty Images)
The ponderous People's Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF) -- the largest standing army in the world -- is being reorganized into a leaner and meaner fighting force able to deploy and fight anywhere in the world at a moment's notice.
With over 1.6 million men in 18 Army Groups, the PLAGF accounts for some three-fourths of the total manpower in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), or the armed forces of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The PLA's primary role and that of the PLAGF is to protect the CPC first and the Chinese state second.
Some 40 percent of the ground force divisions and brigades are either armored or mechanized to fight in large scale conventional battles. The current structure of the PLAGF is patterned after that of the defunct Soviet Army that emphasizeed the primacy of tank divisions and mechanized divisions in fast paced mobile warfare.
China now plans to reorganize this massive ground army in a bid to make this force more agile and adaptable to modern military threats.
Analysts said a number of the existing 18 Army Groups, each of which consists of anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 men will be downsized into 25 to 30 smaller divisions.
"This is a main trend in modern warfare. Even the Russian army has tried to learn from the U.S. Army by reducing the size of their troops, making land forces become more nimble and quick-response," said a retired PLA senior colonel.
The Soviet model of organizing army corps still existent in the PLAGF isn't suited to the demands of modern warfare, noted the retired colonel.
A 2015 Chinese defense white paper emphasized the need to build smaller, multifunctional and modular units within the PLAGF to make it more nimble.
Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015 announced a series of measures to reorganize the PLA. Under the reforms, the four PLA general headquarters were disbanded and reorganized into 15 units directly controlled by the Central Military Commission reporting to Xi.
China has also reorganized its seven military regions into five combat zones.
