PLA becomes smaller in size but stronger in battle effectiveness

The PLA officers and men are rapidly maneuvering by riding motorcycles.

In the past 60 years since the founding of the People s Republic of China, the size of the Chinese People s Liberation Army (PLA) is becoming smaller and smaller, but the battle effectiveness of the PLA is getting stronger and stronger, said Chen Zhou, researcher with the War Theory and Strategy Research Department of the Academy of Military Sciences of the PLA, who was quoted in an article on the website of the China News Service.

According to Chen Zhou, to reduce quantity and raise quality is a basic principle for the modernization drive of the PLA. China declared respectively in 1985, 1997 and 2003 to cut down the number of the PLA servicemen by one million, 500,000 and 200,000. In late 2005, China accomplished the task of disarming 200,000 servicemen. Now the PLA maintains the size of 2.3 million.

Chen Zhou said that there were three objectives in the disarmament of the PLA in the past 60 years.

The first objective was to optimize the structure of the services and arms by cutting down Army troop units with backward equipment and technologies and strengthening the construction of the Navy, the Air Force and the Second Artillery Force (SAF). By optimizing the establishment within the troops and the size and structure of the services and arms, the proportion of the high-tech troops of the PLA has been increased.