China this week revealed new details about the size of its military in a report that U.S.-based analysts largely dismissed for its omissions on defense spending, weapons systems and strategic ambitions.
The document, posted April 16 on People’s Daily Online, the English-version website of the state-run newspaper, for the first time included a headcount of People’s Liberation Army by service. There are 850,000 troops in the army, 235,000 in the navy and 398,000 in the air force, it states, for a total of 1.48 million.
The report, “The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces,” didn’t include a similar tally for the PLA’s Second Artillery Force, the more secretive unit that oversees nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, or its civilian workforce. China has previously said its military has 2.3 million members /.../
Arguably the most noteworthy part of the the report is a section that seems to indicate the Chinese air force has the responsibility over the army, navy and police force of providing territorial air defense, according to Roger Cliff, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
“It would suggest they’ve been able to break down the organizational walls, the bureaucratic barriers, that would start to truly enable joint operations, at least in the air defense, which has been a longstanding weakness of the PLA,” he said, though he cautioned, “I’m not sure if what they wrote is actually true.”