But China as a rising power may need to attack others with Ground Force to attain its political goals. If China has to fight an Urban warfare in Taiwan for example. Street to street fight with just 1 million active ground force with such a low reserve could be problematic.Who dares to attack China with ground force ?
In the past China had something like 100M reserve when China was poor, backward and almost relied on ground force entirely
China's Auxiliary Forces - PAP and Militia
- Thread starter tamsen_ikard
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That's only like the active reserve force (The 500k) I belive China's actual reserve is way higher because every soldier that finishes their 2 year service recites a speech saying that they will return when war breaks out or something like that.
This, large portions of the population are trained due to selective mandatory service. Theoretically, calling up 5-10% of the population on short notice would be possible. But practically, it's hard to imagine for which scenario this would be needed.
The armed police are very capable at counter insurgency. Their numbers can also be surged, like in Xinjiang.
If China had to deal with an internal uprising in Taiwan, armed police and a small number of elite PLA units with air/naval support would likely be the answer.
However, if Taiwan is attacked by large amounts of foreign troops, I.e. a real enemy invasion of China, then it is unlikely China would engage in protracted warfare with invaders and separatist fighters in the streets. Instead, they would cordon off the whole province by air, sea and internet, get the loyal Chinese citizens to vacate operation areas and enter refugee zones, destroy all infrastructure that isn't controlled the government forces, and then surround the surviving fighters from the countryside.
For that type of operation, they mostly need bombs and not too many ground soldiers.
yes but in reality due to skill fade most people that have retired for a period of time will require retraining. assuming that skill fade becomes significant after two years, that means China can call up its retirees from the past two years and not have to devote significant time and resource to training them (maybe they will just require a quick refresher on whatever their job will be). factoring in that some will have become unfit for service and others not required, we are looking at somewhere between 500k-750k that China can call up immediately. which is pretty good, its larger than most armed forces in the world.
I'm not sure but I read somewhere that in addition to the PLA and PAP China's total paramilitary forces number close to 10 million and that they also have 3 million pmcs
Now I don't know if those numbers are correct or not but given your population of over 1 billion it doesn't seem out of place.
Now I don't know if those numbers are correct or not but given your population of over 1 billion it doesn't seem out of place.
Shouldn't this thread be moved to army section? There's no PAP thread currently.
PAP Motorcycle Combat Training
PAP is currently training for cooperation with FPV, large UAV, and robotic dogs.I think the 500k reserve is the way China want to communicate to their neighbor countries that they don't have any military ambition to invade another country. But the question is, is the 500k is even the real number? I mean, yes, the reserve is 500k. but there are so many ex-soldiers who got retired after 4 years of service. And they still train periodically. So the number should be higher than that. Of course, they won't be combat ready if the government recall them to the service again. But with the Chinese active army today, they have already have about 1 millions to send into the front line, and the reserve, PAP and the retiree can refill the defensive posts for the time being, while they train for 3 months to get into the shape again.
When the war goes longer than anticipated and become the war of attrition, these ex-soldiers have been ready to refill the loss. And they can also open a recruitment from the militia to train as a regular soldiers. Plus, China also has already has robotic army and drone to help with quantity side of power.
500,000 is not a reliable number. In fact, most of the PLA headcount numbers beyond the topline figure are not reliable due to being some combination of outdated, misreported, or taken out of context. Many reforms + limited visibility + short timeframe = uncertain numbers.