SOURCE:
https://www.businessinsider.in/international/news/china-and-japan-are-building-forces-to-fight-it-out-on-pacific-islands-heres-how-they-stack-up/articleshow/77490856.cms


REF TO :    https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33153/236

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33153.pdf

China and Japan are building forces to fight it out on Pacific islands — here's how they stack up 

                                  BY 

                                     BENJAMIN BRIMELOW

11 AUG 2020

China has increasingly contentious relations with its neighbors, particularly Japan, with which Beijing has disputes over several islands in the East China Sea.

While the risk of conflict is low, any clash between them would require forces that can approach, capture, and defend islands, and both are building military units to do just that.

Military success in the Pacific has always relied on two things: naval strength and amphibious capabilities. Bitter fighting between the Allies and Japan across the region’s seas and islands during World War II made this abundantly clear.

China has carefully studied history, and its rapid increase in military might is now changing the balance of power in the world’s largest ocean. That makes many of China’s neighbors nervous — and one is responding in kind: Japan.

A well-equipped marine corps

Chinese marines at a military training  base in Bayingol, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,January 21, 2016.

Even amid China’s overall military growth, the expansion of People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and its Marine Corps (PLANMC) has been striking.

In the last three years, the PLANMC has grown from 10,000 marines to between 28,000 and 35,000 and has plans to eventually reach a total of 100,000.

After briefly forming and disbanding in the 1950s, the PLANMC was reestablished in 1979 and, like the PLAN, soon began receiving significant investment.

Today, the PLANMC has seven brigades and is present wherever the PLAN operates. Each brigade is heavily armed, including a minimum of two infantry battalions, an armored regiment, a howitzer battalion, a missile battalion, and a special forces amphibious reconnaissance battalion.

Chinese marines at attention during a visit by a US official in Zhanjiang, November 16, 2006.

Particularly impressive are the PLANMC’s armored amphibious vehicles. These include the ZBD-05 — which is actually faster on water and better armed than its Western counterpart, which Japan uses — and even a self-propelled howitzer, the PLZ-07.

The US Defense Intelligence Agency in 2019 called the PLANMC “a fully amphibious force capable of conducting amphibious assault operations using combined-arms tactics and multiple avenues of approach.”

The PLANMC is “the most capable amphibious force of any South China Sea claimant,” the agency said. This is due in large part to the strength of the PLAN, which is the world’s largest navy with well over 300 vessels.

China is building ships faster than almost all of its competitors. According to a US Office of Naval Intelligence report, their “design and material quality is in many cases comparable to [US Navy] ships, and China is quickly closing the gap in any areas of deficiency.”

This is certainly true of vessels used for amphibious operations.

Chinese navy Type 071 amphibious transport dock ship Changba 

The PLAN has long maintained a fleet of landing ships to carry tanks, troops, and equipment. That fleet has been bolstered by new, modern amphibious ships similar to those used by the British, French, and US navies.

Since 2006, the PLAN has acquired six Type-071 amphibious transport docks with at least one more on the way. These ships differ from previous landing ships in that they  can carry hundreds of troops multiple armored amphibious vehicles, and up to four or more transport helicopters, such as the Z-18, for air-assault missions.

In just over a year China has built two