Hong Kong, October 21 (ANI): The ground forces of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has traditionally been the strongest and most numerical in China’s military. Chairman Xi Jinping has been working hard to drag the PLA, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the modern era. This included shedding 300,000 soldiers and officers in a restructure announced by Xi at a military parade in Tiananmen Square in September 2015.

These thousands upon thousands of troops were dismissed from 2015-18, in a move designed to make the PLA Ground Force leaner. It is believed the army now makes up slightly less than half the PLA’s two million members. Nonetheless, despite the cull, China’s communist party-controlled PLA remains the largest military force in the world.

The modernization of the PLA is perhaps better described as being deliberate rather than rapid. The overarching aims of the ongoing restructuring are, in the words of the government, “to basically complete national defense a...