An Analysis of Chinese Military Reform – Towards the US Model?

The result of his reforms is that the command and control structure of the Chinese military is now modelled closely after that of the United States. [...] The PLA of the Future Although Xi Jinping, like Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, lacks the revolutionary credentials of previous chairmen of the Central Military Commission (CMC), he has emphasised that his “China Dream” includes the “dream of strong armed forces”. [...] Xi Jinping disbanded the unified combatant commands of the seven Military Regions, replacing them with five Theatre Commands, analogous to the six geographic unified combatant commands of the US, namely, the US European Command, Central Command, Indo-Pacific Command, Africa Command, Northern Command, and Southern Command. [...] The Five Theatre Commands of the PLA Source: Wikipedia Xi believed that under the previous structure, the leaders of the Military Regions had become too powerful. [...] • The Eastern and Southern Theatre Commands safeguard China’s strategic interests in the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.