PLA Ground Forces

People's Liberation Army's Reserve Forces, A Preliminary Study

• Introduction
• Who Are The PLA Reservists?
• Mobilization:
• Organization Structure:
• Order of Battle and Training:
• Conclusion and Reference
• Notes

 

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People's Liberation Army's Reserve Forces,
A Preliminary Study

by Xinhui

 

As with the regular army, the PLA reserve also became more professional, according to PLA Daily, compare to 1998, the average age of a PLA reserve officer dropped 2 to 3 years in 2002, 74% of them have a college degree, 80% are trained in military academies, and more than 50% of them were from regular army either thought transfers or resign from active duty instead of sign up after retirement. [27]

 

 

The creation of the new PLA reserve system has been far from a smooth process, according to recent PLA Daily articles. These noted some examples of the problems encountered:

• Reservist looking for excuses to not attend training,
• Lack of interest during training,
• In one case, a demand for payment during the climax of an exercise. [28]

During investigations and interviews with the problem reservists and units, the problems could be summarized as follows: lack of rewards or encouragements. A reservist who finishes a long exercise returns home with only a "People's Armament Branch certificate of Ethics and Talent" (Decai biaoxian Jianding Shu). Thus the only reward is a lip service or "A job well done" paper. There is no apparent bonus program, or process for awarding medals to soldiers completing periods of training. Another common complaint is the lack of money. A construction worker could earn much more at his job than serving in reserve training sessions, as they are considered self-employ. In addition, there seem to be lack of effective enforcement for regulations. Verbal or written warnings and a possible deduction of wages serves no purpose for the reservists who are farmers or that are otherwise self-employed. [29] All those problems points out that the PLA reservist's pay and benifits have not kept up with the Chinese economic improvement. It is noted that the PLA reservist receives no pay, instead they will continue to receive a salary from their civilian jobs, except if they are peasants or self-employed, then they are paid a sum to compensate for money they would earn while on their farming or on their job. As noted above, this could cause issue on the correct compensation package would received, as it is difficult to measure money one would lose while away on training and drill. Therefore the example cited above of demanding for payment during the climax of an exercise would have been expected.

PLA Daily offered three solutions to address above issues:

• Increase political and psychological training of an problem unit,
• Work closely with reservist? work units and encourage promotion for outstanding reservists and,
• Use good role models to act as aguide . [30]

Over all, the PLA reserve force is under the leadership of PLA's General Political Department (Zong Zhnghzibu) of the CMC. At each level of the PLA's operational organization structure, reservists are to report under their level of Political Department. PLA's Operational organization structure are: Military Region, Military District, (Garrison District Weishu Qu, Police District Jingbei Qu ) and Military Sub-District. At the same time, PAFD of provincial, regional, or municipalities manages day-to-day operation of the PLA reservist. It is noted, while CMC's GPD pays for the reservist salary, regional governments have to share the cost of training and mobilization [31]. If the training involved long distance travel to an exercise to a different region, reserve unit's home city or provincial government is still responsible for their share of funding. [32] This could cause issues with quality between reserve units of wealthy province and poorer inland provinces that have smaller operating budgets.

 

 

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