2015 People's Republic of China military reform

The first wave of the People's Republic of China military reform was announced in November 2015 at a plenary session of the Central Leading Group for Military Reform of the Central Military Commission.[1][2][3][4][5]

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In January 2014, Chinese senior military officers said that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) was planning to reduce the number of military regions from seven to five "Theater Commands" to have joint command with the ground, naval, air and rocket forces. This is planned to change their concept of operations from primarily ground-oriented defence to mobile and coordinated movement of all services and to enhance offensive air and naval capabilities into the East China Sea. The coastal Jinan, Nanjing, and Guangzhou regions will be turned into three military areas, each with a joint operations command, for projecting power into the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and South China Sea. The four other inland military regions will be streamlined into two military areas mainly for organizing forces for operations. The change was projected to occur through 2019.[6]

The South China Morning Post reported in December 2015 that the Central Military Commission, chaired by Xi, would scrap three of the four army headquarters: the General Political Department, General Logistics and General Armaments. Only the General Staff Department will remain."[7]

The plans "consolidate the seven regional commands into five units and re-organize the four army headquarters." The most striking features of the proposals for the five new Theater Commands are a vast new West zone that makes up more than half the country (merging the Lanzhou Military Region and the Chengdu Military Region) and a larger North zone that will concentrate on Mongolia, the Russian Far East and the Korean peninsula. The five new strategic areas also referred to as combat zones, were projected to be up and running as early as January 1, 2016.

Sources said plans were nearing completion for the new West zone –- by far the largest of the five -– to include more than a third of the nation's land-based military forces. The area is home to only 22% of the country's population, many from the ethnic minority groups and non-Han Chinese. “The West combat zone will concentrate on threats in Xinjiang (新疆) and Tibet and other minority areas, close to Afghanistan and other states that are home to training bases for separatists, terrorists and extremists,” one of the sources said. Another source close to the army said the proposal had been revised in recent weeks to move the West zone headquarters to Ürümqi instead of Chengdu or Lanzhou.

Xi Jinping, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, announced in September 2016 that the PLA would be cut by 300,000 troops to 2 million by 2017. Sources said up to 70% of forces axed would-be officers in land-based units.

A source in Jinan (濟南) said that so far it had been confirmed that the 13 army groups based in the current Beijing, Shenyang (瀋陽), Nanjing (南京) and Guangzhou military commands would be kept.