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Recruitment and promotions are different in the PAP and in the PLA. Under normal circumstances, a PLA soldier who has finished his term of service will not be transferred to the PAP. Even though the swelling of the PAP ranks was due to the restructuring of the PLA, the new recruits were not demobilized soldiers. In the past five years, 240,000 military cadres were demobilized and transferred to other occupations. The demobilization announced by Jiang Zemin concerns twice that number and must be carried out within three years. It is not yet clear how and where these soldiers will be relocated. However, it has been confirmed that a number of the soldiers to be demobilized will join the ranks of the PAP. This means that the PAP could increase from 100,000 to 200,000 soldiers and that the border defense units, especially in Northwestern and Southwestern China, could be important beneficiaries of the PLA reform. Mergers could possibly take place, such as in the Xinjiang military district, where two PLA and PAP border defense units currently coexist side by side.

While the PAP is taking in new recruits, another phenomenon is happening, namely the transfer of PAP soldiers and officers to the ranks of the Public Security Police. It was announced at the end of last year that the State Council had approved a reform of the border inspection teams. According to the new plan, inspectors must become professionals and can no longer be soldiers doing their compulsory military service. In other words, they would no longer be PAP soldiers. These inspectors would be placed directly under the responsibility of the Ministry of Public Security through an "Entry and Exit Border Defense Inspection General Unit" (入境邊防檢查總站) which has to be set up before June 30, 1998. As the report concluded, it will simplify matters for the Ministry of Public Security which will then have direct responsibility over all border defense police. The new scheme started this January in Shenzhen where the border defense unit of the PAP was professionalized and became border police. The same is also happening in Beijing and Shanghai and other border points