China has laid bare the scale of its rapidly expanding military might for the first time in a white paper that argued the American “pivot to Asia” was destabilising the region.
China’s People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, boasts some 850,000 officers spread across seven regional commands, according to the defence report which was issued on Tuesday.
Meanwhile the navy and air force have 235,000 and 398,000 officers respectively.
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The PLA contingent is split between command centres in Beijing, Nanjing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenyang, Lanzhou, and Jinan, the report says.
The white paper also alludes to China’s powerful “Second Artillery Force”. Described as “the country’s core force for strategic deterrence”, the force oversees China’s nuclear arsenal and is tasked with “deterring other countries from using nuclear weapons against China”.
The total number of service members listed was 1.48 million. In 2006, China said the military had a total of 2.3 million members. It was not clear if the new count represented a real reduction in numbers, or if the shortfall was made up by other ground force units that appeared to have been omitted from the count, including the Second Artillery Force.
State-run news agency Xinhua said the white paper represented the first time China had made public “the actual number of army, navy and air force servicemen”.
China’s “main missile lineup” was also being divulged for the first time, Xinhua added.
