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Drastic cuts for China's military
HONG KONG, China -- China says it will slash its military by a further 200,000 troops, representing an eight percent cutback in its armed forces, before the end of next year. China has already trimmed 500,000 personnel from the People's Liberation Army (PLA), but with 2.5 million troops, it is still the world's largest armed force. Former president Jiang Zemin, who still heads the PLA as chairman of the Communist Party's Central Military Commission, announced the cuts during a visit to Changsha, capital of the southern province of Hunan, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Monday. China's leaders say they are cutting numbers to 2.3 million to make the PLA more efficient and "accelerate modernization," Xinhua said. Jiang was quoted as telling the meeting the move is part of a shift from "mechanized" warfare to "information" warfare, as China moves towards a high-tech strategy for its army. "Further reducing the scale of the army will help us concentrate our limited strategic resources to quicken the pace of information technology construction of our army," Xinhua reported Jiang as saying. In recent times, the 76-year-old Jiang has reiterated the need to raise the technological level of the PLA, particularly its navy and air force. Western military analysts put the Chinese army at about 1.7 million, the navy 220,000 and the air force at 420,000. The rest come from the fourth branch, the Second Artillery Corps, which is responsible for nuclear missile forces. The move to cut troop numbers follow in the wake of China announcing in March this year its lowest rise in defense spending over 12 years. Beijing said it was upping spending for the PLA by 9.6 percent, a meager hike compared to the 17.6 percent rise for 2001 and 2002. The budget does not include funds for the research and development of weapons and it is not known how much is spent on the semi-military People's Armed Police. Since the late 1990s, the PLA has dramatically improved its jet fighters, submarines and missiles, including those that target aircraft carriers. In July this year, a Pentagon report said China was acquiring short-range missiles at a much faster rate than U.S. officials had previously thought, and was aiming many of those weapons at Taiwan, and possibly American ,targets. -- CNN's Senior China Analyst Willy Wo-Lap Lam contributed to this report
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