The People's Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF) will disband five of its 18 Group Armies in a wide-ranging reorganization intended to transform the cumbersome force into a more agile combat organization able to respond rapidly to military crises involving the United States and Japan.

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Chinese state-owned media says this overhaul was begun by President Xi Jinping, who is Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the Communist Party of China body that controls the People's Liberation Army (PLA), of which PLAGF is a part.

To be disbanded will be the 20th and 27th Group Armies in the Central Theater Command responsible for the defense of Beijing; the 14th Group Army in the Chengdu Military Region in the southwest; the 16th Group Army in the Shenyang Military Region in the north bordering North Korea and the 47th Group Army in the Lanzhou Military Region in the west bordering India.

Over 200,000 troops will be affected by the loss of the five Group Armies. Most of these men are expected to be mustered out of the Army while the few that will remain in the service will be reassigned to other services such as the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, the People's Liberation Army Navy and the People's Liberation Army Air Force, said a military source quoted by state-owned media.

"It's possible that some of the army corps will be turned into marines or parachutists," said the source.

The 16th and 47th Group Armies are the power bases of disgraced former CMC vice-chairmen Gen. Xu Caihou and Gen. Guo Boxiong. Guo is a retired general sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery while Xu Caihou was charged with corruption but died in 2015 while under investigation.

"The axing of the 16th and 47th army groups is a decision made by Xi to further clean up all the pernicious influence left by Guo and Xu, paving the way for Xi to assign his men amid the ongoing leadership reshuffle ahead of the party's congress in autumn," said a source.

Disbanding the powerful 16th Group Army with its four armored divisions, however, might not prove feasible at present given the PLAGF's need for armored and mechanized troops to respond to crises in the Korean peninsula. One possibility will be merging the 16th and 40th Group Armies.

A PLAGF Group Army has anywhere from 45,000 to 60,000 men. Each of the PLA's seven military regions has two or three Group Armies.

TagsPeople's Liberation Army Ground Force, PLAGF, Group Army, Central Military Commission, Communist Party of China