Chinas infantery

Well, this question is very simple. Almost every person who knows the military well knows this.

According to the 1999 Statistics about the PLA service memebers, 3,000,000 minus 500,000 gives you a total of 2,500,000. By 2005, plans to further downsize the Personel Numbers is already occuring in large numbers as a result from the Modernization goals for creating more smaller, professionally trained, and technologically advanced units.

Please note that the information below is quite old and the official numbers confirmed may be underreported of past year's activities.

Source: http://www.chinatoday.com/arm/
 
Basically looking at two kinds.
Smaller units with pretty high tech gear and high quality training.
Then you got the large, quantity based troops.
 
One may also include the Peoples' Armed Police (PAP), which is considered an adjunt to the PLA. They are unlike conventional police forces and can be used as infantry units.
The reduction of the earlier 118 infantry divisions to 90 divisions has taken place and the reducted manpower has been transfered to PAP. The current PAP strenght is approx 800,000.
The site below gives the Orbat of the PLA.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/agency/pla-orbat.htm
PLA training in unarmed combat.
Keming-PLA-training-2.jpg
 
That is a lot of people, but i guess that in war time these number could increase a lot more, isn´t it? The number of chinese males in age to join the army must be incredible....
 
staurofilakes said:
That is a lot of people, but i guess that in war time these number could increase a lot more, isn´t it? The number of chinese males in age to join the army must be incredible....
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The militia units have not been taken into account, so you can assume that they can raise a lot of manpower during crisis.
 
One may also include the Peoples' Armed Police (PAP), which is considered an adjunt to the PLA. They are unlike conventional police forces and can be used as infantry units.
The reduction of the earlier 118 infantry divisions to 90 divisions has taken place and the reducted manpower has been transfered to PAP. The current PAP strenght is approx 800,000.
Click to expand...

The PAP is very different from the Regular Army and somewhat similar to the American SWAT team and ATF (Alcohol Tabacco and Firearm) Agency. So in this case, it's highly unlikely that they will be deployed as Infantry units. I have traveled around Southern China last year over the summer vacation and spotted PAP units serving along the ranks of the conventional police. Therefore, they do serve as regular police units as well, depending on the degree of the situation. But most of the time, they serve as back-up units.

Don't take the internet sources into account, because some of it can be inaccurate. Personally, I've seen the PAP being called in to break into Illegal Businesses, mostly existant along the border next to neighboring countries. Now of course the Army doesn't conduct this kind of activity obviously. So in my opinion, PAP is not accounted for as the total amount of Military Personel.
 
welcome to china! china got too many people ,so they need more
police
Cabal said:
One may also include the Peoples' Armed Police (PAP), which is considered an adjunt to the PLA. They are unlike conventional police forces and can be used as infantry units.
The reduction of the earlier 118 infantry divisions to 90 divisions has taken place and the reducted manpower has been transfered to PAP. The current PAP strenght is approx 800,000.
Click to expand...

The PAP is very different from the Regular Army and somewhat similar to the American SWAT team and ATF (Alcohol Tabacco and Firearm) Agency. So in this case, it's highly unlikely that they will be deployed as Infantry units. I have traveled around Southern China last year over the summer vacation and spotted PAP units serving along the ranks of the conventional police. Therefore, they do serve as regular police units as well, depending on the degree of the situation. But most of the time, they serve as back-up units.

Don't take the internet sources into account, because some of it can be inaccurate. Personally, I've seen the PAP being called in to break into Illegal Businesses, mostly existant along the border next to neighboring countries. Now of course the Army doesn't conduct this kind of activity obviously. So in my opinion, PAP is not accounted for as the total amount of Military Personel.
Click to expand...
 
Cabal said:
The PAP is very different from the Regular Army and somewhat similar to the American SWAT team and ATF (Alcohol Tabacco and Firearm) Agency.
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Of course PAP deploys its "SWAT" like teams, its part of thier job. The rest of the units can be used as armed units, it just a matter of change of role.
Cabal said:
So in this case, it's highly unlikely that they will be deployed as Infantry units. I have traveled around Southern China last year over the summer vacation and spotted PAP units serving along the ranks of the conventional police. Therefore, they do serve as regular police units as well, depending on the degree of the situation. But most of the time, they serve as back-up units.
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I am sure the impression your vist game of the PAP was of standard police, however, it is different from standard police of other countries. They can serve as regular army units.
Cabal said:
Don't take the internet sources into account, because some of it can be inaccurate.
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My info is not based on the internet, but as per info obtained from 'china watchers', and info from military schools of instruction.
 
Sorry Lemon, I'm with Cabal on this one. From my knowledge on the Chinese I've gotten the impression that the PAP's use in warfare would be as back-of-the-line units.
 
yup, even the fire department is in part of PAP's job, don't know how can they be counted as infentry....
 
Whispering Death said:
Sorry Lemon, I'm with Cabal on this one. From my knowledge on the Chinese I've gotten the impression that the PAP's use in warfare would be as back-of-the-line units.
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You are right about PAP being used as 2nd line troops, and that is what I mean't. They may not be used as classical infantry units, but they are a primary counter-insurgency force of the PLA.
 
there are 8 departments of PAP..

Internal Guards Corps, Border Defence Corps, Fire-Fighting Corps, Guard Corps, Hydropower Corps, Gold Corps, Transportation Corps, and Forestry Corps

check here
http://www.sinodefence.com/army/orbat/pap.asp

PAP's internal guards and border defence are the large potions of its nearly 1 million strong..and they are trained in infantry tactics and armed with regular infantry equipments (type 81 or 95 rifle, and even some armored cars stuff)

and they can be used in regular war, and actually they are very good at urban warfare, with their hard training of using of martial arts and rifle shooting
 
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