The People’s Liberation Army(PLA) is the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the principal military force of the People’s Republic of China(PRC). It is one of the largest, fast growing and rapidly modernizing militaries in the world. It has been termed as a potential military superpower, with significant regional defense and rising global power projection capabilities.
Given China’s notorious opaqueness about its level of defense spending, its total military expenditure of $293bn in 2023, the second largest defense budget in the world after the United States with $916 bn, as per SIPRI Fact Sheet, April 2024 is expected to be much higher. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has planned to transform the PLA into a fully modern army on a par with that of the United States’ military in the Pacific, which Beijing sees as one of the biggest barriers to the reunification of Taiwan by 2027, the centenary of the founding of the PLA.
Xi aims to modernize the PLA completely by 2035, and become a “world class” military by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party’s rise to power. In 2014, China’s Navy overtook the U.S. Navy to become the largest military fleet in the world — although the U.S. Navy is still considered to be more powerful. A 2023 Australian Strategic Policy Institute study of what it deemed as 44 critical technologies concluded that China leads the world in 37 of them, including 5G internet, electric batteries, and hypersonic missiles.
Origin of PLA
The CCP founded its military wing on 01 August 1927 beginning the Chinese Civil War in the Nanchang uprising against the nationalist government before being reintegrated into the National Revolution Army (NRA) during the Second Sino-Japanese War(1937-45).
Organisation of PLA
Consisting of four Services to include Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force – and four arms – Aerospace Force, Cyberspace Force, Information Support Force, and Joint Logistics Support Force; the PLA is led by the Central Military Commission (CMC) with its chairman as Commander-in-Chief. Maintaining the largest army in the world, the PLA of China has over two million trained men and women on active duty and approximately over a million members of the People’s Armed Police (PAP) and millions more members of a part time militia —including a maritime militia.
The People’s Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF) is the Land -based service branch of the PLA with 965,000 soldiers and the largest and oldest branch of the entire Chinese armed forces. In times of national emergency, the PAP and the China Militia act as a reserve and support element for the Ground Force. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) comprises the Submarine Forces, the Surface Force , the Coastal Defence Force, the Marine Corps and the Naval Air Force with a personnel strength of 240,000 personnel. It is the second largest navy in the world by tonnage, at 2 million tons in 2021, only behind the United States Navy, and has the largest number of major surface combatants of any navy globally with an overall battle force of approximately 370 surface ships and submarines—in comparison, the US Navy’s battle force is approximately 292 ships and submarines.
Moreover, only counting the surface vessels of the PLA Navy without factoring in the PRC’s large fleet of coast guard ships and flotillas of “civilian” fishing boats — which doubles as a floating militia — would severely undercount the size of China’s maritime forces and underestimate the scale of the security challenge China poses in the western Pacific and the oceans beyond. The PLA Air Force (PLAAF) composed of aviation, ground-based air defense, radar, Airborne Corps, and other support elements with a strength of around 398,000 personnel ,operates a large and varied fleet of some 4000 aircrafts of which around 2,566 are combat aircraft (fighter, attack, and bombers). China has the second-largest active combat aircraft fleet and the third-largest total aircraft fleet in the world.
The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force(PLARF) , with approximately 120,000 personnel and six ballistic missile “bases” deployed independently in the five Theatres throughout China controls China’s arsenal of land-based ballistic, hypersonic, cruise missiles—both nuclear and conventional. China has the largest landbased missile arsenal in the world to include 1,200 conventionally armed short range ballistic missiles, 200 to 300 conventional medium range ballistic missiles and an unknown number of conventional intermediate-range ballistic missiles as well as 200-300 ground-launched cruise missiles. Many of these are extremely accurate, which would allow them to destroy targets even without nuclear warheads. As estimated in 2023, China has a stockpile of approximately 500 nuclear warheads. On April 19, the PLA’s Central Military Commission (CMC) announced the end of the PLA’s Strategic Support Force (SSF) that had been created in 2015- 16 by bringing together two operational forces- the Space Systems Department and the Network Systems Department- each responsible for establishing China’s dominance in space and Cyber warfare in favour of three specialised branches. While the pre-existing aerospace and cyber branches of the SSF will become independent aerospace and cyber ‘forces’, they will be joined also by a newly launched ‘ Information Support Force (ISF)’, each to report directly to the PLA’s CMC to accelerate the second stage of military modernisation as for more than two decades, the PLA has been referred to as a “half-mechanized, half informatised force.
Control of the PLA
The PLA is not a national army but a political army. Hence, China’s armed forces, including the PLA, are tightly controlled by the CCP through a network of political commissars and system of party committees ensuring allegiance to the CCP and the party’s top leader Xi.
Restructuring
In 2016, China enacted major reforms of the PLA in order to centralize and streamline command and control of the PLA. The restructuring included replacing four massive general departments with offices and bureaus including the PAP’s chain of command, which now includes China’s coast guard directly under CMC. The seven former military regions were reorganized into five theater commands – four focused on addressing the most immediate challenges on the PRC periphery to the north, south, west and the east while the fifth being responsible for protecting the top leadership of the CCP and the political center of the PRC — Beijing and environs. The latest operational doctrine of the PLA ground forces highlights the importance of information technology, electronic and information warfare and long-range precision strikes in future warfare. In recent decades China’s armed forces have been actively engaged in a range of non-combat missions beyond the borders of the PRC. As of 2023, China contributes the 10th most troops to peacekeeping operations of any U.N. country, and contributes more military personnel than any permanent U.N. Security Council member.
Assertive PLA
Presently, there is a little doubt that the PLA’s central war fighting scenario is Taiwan. In recent years, as the PLAN has also expanded into a blue water , regular exercises and naval patrols have increased in the South China Sea within the Nine-dash line, the Senkaku Islands/Diaoyutai in the East China Sea, and the island of Taiwan which it all claims as its territory. In addition, the Indian Ocean Region continues to witness many of its activities reflective of hegemonistic strategic rivalry. Despite proclaiming a policy of peaceful unification of Taiwan, the CCP refuses to renounce the use of force and continues to apply the PLA — including its Navy, Air Force and Rocket Force — in gray-zone operations or coercive activities short of armed conflict including cyber and information warfare to deter and intimidate Taiwan. China’s armed forces have not only become larger and more capable but also more assertive, particularly around the PRC’s immediate periphery to include along the extended disputed Himalayan Border with India in addition to the cross-strait military balance that has shifted dramatically in the PRC’s favor in recent decades.
Conclusion
For decades, Chinese leaders have been trying to build a more capable military. But no leader has had greater ambition than Xi Jinping. During Xi’s tenure, the PLA has moved to a joint command structure, upgraded and built significantly more of its platforms, and improved its ability to capitalize on private sector innovation — dubbed “military-civil fusion” — among other achievements. The PLA is more powerful and capable than ever, but how China’s armed forces would perform in a major military conflict is uncertain erience in combat post 1979 Sino-Vietnam Conflict.