China set to shake up military structure

China will shake up its military by establishing a joint operational command structure by 2020 and rejig existing military regions as part of overall reforms, President Xi Jinping said in a comments reported on Thursday.

In a lengthy speech carried by the official Xinhua news agency, President Xi gave a broad-brush description of the reforms he wanted, but gave few details aside from repeating a September pledge to cut troop numbers by 3,00,000.

“Under the leadership of the [Communist] Party, our military has gone from small to big, from weak to strong, from victory to victory. On this road, reform and innovation steps have never stopped,” he was quoted as saying.

Territorial disputes Mr. Xi is determined to modernise the military at the same time as China gets more assertive in its territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas.

China’s navy is investing in submarines and aircraft carriers, while the air force is developing stealth fighters. The troop cuts are part of long-mooted reforms to simplify and further professionalise the military, especially command and leadership structures that are still largely run along Soviet lines. As part of this move, China's seven military regions, which have separate command structures that tend to focus on ground-based operations, are expected to be reduced, though Mr. Xi did not explicitly say this.

China has been moving rapidly to upgrade its military hardware, but operational integration of complex and disparate systems across a regionalised command structure is a major challenge.

In the past, regional level military commanders have enjoyed latitude over their forces and branches of the military have remained highly independent.