The Future of the PLAN Marine Corps

The PLAN Marines could definately use a helicopter carrier of some sort. The Varyag could fufill that function once China has a more advanced indigenous carrier. As for other equipment, the PLAN Marines are pretty well off, but obviously their going to need more ampihbious capability. ATGMs are a big part of their arsenal because of the dangerousness of a Taiwanese counterattack on landing beaches (see the Taiwan MBT thread.)

I thnk the question for the PLAN Marines is do they want to become like the Royal Marines, a small elite ampibious force that can get ashore and conduct limited operations without much trouble or like the US Marine Corps, which is the world's biggest Marine Corps, operates MBTs and could crush the militaries of most of the worlds countries but is very tough to move around and deploy, and is not as...elite. That's the choice. I think that the PLAN Marine Corps will choose a combination of both, but more toward the Royal Marine option. China is large, so it's force must be big, but I don't think that it will have the capability to move lots of tanks all over the world and have its own air force any time soon, like the US Marines.

I think it would be easier and better to conduct elite forces like the royal marines. Technology will not have to be developed to help bring tanks or whatever like the USMC do but i think the reason the royal marines size is so small is because its relative to their population, their training is extremely high and pass rates are quite low, this low pass rate continues with SOF such as the SAS, but since China has a large population, it could perhaps have quite a large elite force, although this is merely all probability, and it may not happen this way.

I think we are forgetting the political implications of all this.

If China wanted to build up a multi-divisional marine corps then it can do it quite easily, LPH's are actually easier to build than some of the advanced destroyers that China is currently producing. The problem with building up a marine corps of that size is that other countries get the impression that you are adopting an expansionist foreign policy, simply because large marine corps are only ever required by countries with aggressive foreign policies (Read USA)

China is trying very hard to be the good boy on the block so it is not in their interest to provoke the USA or Japan at the present time. In the future where China is on par with the United States in military power then it may be wise to expand the Marine Corps but untill then it is better to concentrate on building up other parts of the military such as C4I, better training, AWACS, tanker capability, better transport capabilities and rotor wing assets as well as professionalising a larger component of the army and further reducing the militia and reservist components.

The last thing that China wants is to give the USA the right to start causing trouble based on the fact that China is looking more and more like a global security threat.