China says it’s cutting 300K troops — but will still be largest military on planet

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday pledged to cut China’s 2.3 million-member People’s Liberation Army by 300,000 troops, amid rising manpower costs and technological capabilities that reduce the need for large numbers of personnel. The announcement at the start of a massive parade in Beijing commemorating Japan’s World War II defeat 70 years ago brings the armed forces’ headcount down to about 2 million, still making it the world’s largest standing military. Xi gave no specific reason for the reduction, but bracketed his announcement with assertions of the PLA’s mission to protect China and “uphold the sacred task of ensuring world peace.”

Prejudice and discrimination, hatred and war can only cause disaster and pain. China will always uphold the path of peaceful development.

Chinese President Xi Jinping

The announcement could be seen as an attempt to soften the impact of Thursday’s spectacle of 12,000 troops marching through the center of the Chinese capital, accompanied by tanks, bomber aircraft and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The parade was largely shunned by Japan, the U.S. and other major democracies that have grown concerned about China’s increasingly aggressive moves to assert its territorial claims in the South China Sea and elsewhere. Despite its huge numbers, the People’s Liberation Army hasn’t fought in a major conflict since a brief 1979 border war with Vietnam, although China has long been a major contributor to United Nations peacekeeping missions and, since 2008, has joined multinational anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden.

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