The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is composed of four service branches and four “arms” that all report to China’s Central Military Commission (CMC), China’s apex military decision-making body. While informally referred to as the Chinese military, the PLA, which is formally the military of the Communist Party of China and not the military of the Chinese state, does not encompass the entirety of what is formally referred to as China’s armed forces. China’s armed forces include not only the PLA but also the People’s Armed Police (PAP), a large internal security force that reports to the CMC just as the PLA. The PAP encompasses the China Coast Guard (CCG), a paramilitary force that not only operates alongside the PLA in so-called sovereignty enforcement operations in disputed waters but will likely spearhead a PLA Navy (PLAN)-backstopped quarantine/blockade type operation in the event of a major crisis over the political fate of Taiwan. China’s armed forces formally also encompass the Militia, a very large, multi-million-person organization that reports to the CMC but is not formally part of the PLA. A separate entity of the Communist Party of China, the Militia includes China’s Maritime Militia, a paramilitary that undertakes so-called sovereignty enforcement operations in disputed waters alongside the PLAN and CCG.
Given the above, any discussion of the role of China’s “military reserves,” loosely defined, needs to draw a distinction between the wholly discharged/demobilized reserves of the PLA, the discharged/demobilized part-time reserves of the PLA, and the very large pool of manpower that exists outside the PLA in the Communist Party of China’s Militia. In a major war, particularly a major protracted war between China and the United States, which will most plausibly revolve around the political fate of Taiwan, Chinese decision-makers are likely to mobilize every entity of the complex party-state apparatus to support the country’s war effort. This includes the Militia, a large organization that is uniquely well-positioned to support the PAP, PLA, and other parts of China’s internal security apparatus in rear area security roles, including rear area air defence roles.
All militaries, including the PLA, are manpower constrainted, and military service tends to be economically unproductive. There is a case to be made that the most capable militaries are those that squeeze the most out of not only the mass of persons that they are allocated, but also the society/larger population from which that pool of manpower is drawn. Some of the most successful examples in recent history include two very different militaries: those of Israel and the United States.
The Israeli military is heavily reliant on not just conscription but a very long, by contemporary standards, term of service. Israel’s total force structure largely exists on paper, short of the rapid and highly tailored selective mobilization of specific parts of the large pool of reservists, which encompasses much of the country’s adult male population.
The American military does not rely on conscription but, similar to the Israeli military, has a total force structure that requires the highly tailored selective mobilization of specific parts of the very large pool of different types of part-time volunteer (paid) reservists. This includes not only reservist personnel who can be used to bring regular/active duty formations to full strength, but, in the case of the United States Army and the United States Air Force, formations, including combat formations, that are almost entirely composed of part-time volunteer (paid) reservists.
Through these very different manpower systems, both Israel and the United States selectively draw upon the human resources that reside outside of their active duty militaries to greatly enhance their military capabilities, including their combat capabilities as and when required.
While PLA service branches and “arms” can tap into ample reserves of recently discharged/demobilized personnel as and when required, China does not currently have widespread part-time military reservists in the manner of the American military or a highly tuned selective mobilization of discharged/demolibzed personnel in the manner of Israel, which is, of course, only practical with a much smaller and more densely concentrated population. The Communist Party of China’s Militia does, however, have an elaborate apparatus in place to locally raise and organize manpower across China. The Militia is, therefore, particularly well-positioned to support the PAP, PLA, and other parts of China’s internal security apparatus in rear area security roles.
While the Militia refers to a specific part of the party-state apparatus, it is important to note that the Communist Party of China also has a presence in workplaces across China, whether state-owned enterprises (SOE) or privately owned companies. Should China ever be subject to large-scale attacks involving the likes of single-use propeller-driven strike drones in the manner that both Russia and Ukraine are on a daily basis, the party apparatus, including the Militia, will offer an existing human infrastructure through which to, for example, train some of the workers at a facility to stop their work to serve as part-time air defence personnel should the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) issue an air raid alert in a given area. This would allow China to avoid the inane situation that Russia finds itself when a handful, sometimes just one, very slow Ukrainian propeller-driven strike drones fly into a military factory or oil refinery while dozens of (unarmed) able bodied workers spectate and record the attack using their mobile phones, which results in videos that regularly offer no indication of even the use of small arms to try to shoot down.
While there are multiple reasons as to why such scenes transpire in Russia, one is that Russia’s current leaders lack the ability to organize and mobilize everyday persons across the country in the manner that members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union could in the past even in the absence of uniformed military personnel in a given town, village, small city, or remote industrial site. China’s all-encompassing party-state apparatus has many downsides, but it does allow Beijing to, in principle, rapidly establish passive defences and short-range defences around potential targets of adversary strike munitions, bolster local security around potential targets, and so forth.
All things considered, militaries do not need to maintain everything in-house and do not require all personnel to work full-time. Air forces, including the PLAAF, for example, benefit from organizing, equipping, and training minimally staffed engineering units at most airbases that can be activated as required to repair runways following an enemy attack. Such a task can, for example, be undertaken by a small number of regular/active duty military personnel who are supplemented by (paid) part-time reservists, and a larger pool of personnel who are only mobilized to undertake such roles if and when required. In China, the latter grouping may formally fall under the Communist Party’s Militia, which can, for example, draw upon the trained pool of labour found in the local construction industry.