The new sprawling West zone will stretch across more than half of China's territory: covering frontiers from Myanmar in the south to India and Central Asian countries in the west, and all the way north to Russia, and including the two vast and troubled regions of Xinjiang and Tibet.
An on-going reorganisation in China's military that will unify two separate military commands currently in charge of guarding the border with India could see as many as one-third of all China's land troops stationed in this expanded new western zone, a report said on Sunday.
While China's 8.5 lakh land forces are currently spread across seven military area commands - of them two western commands, the Lanzhou and Chengdu regions, are tasked with the western and eastern sectors of the border with India respectively, besides Myanmar, Russia and a number of Central Asian countries - a major on-going overhaul of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is expected to create five new military zones directly under the command of the Central Military Commission headed by President Xi Jinping.
The move comes amid reforms to centralise and modernise the PLA to make it a smaller, nimbler and more high-tech military. (Courtesy of India Today)
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