Exclusive | As overseas ambitions expand, China plans 400 per cent increase to marine corps numbers, sources say

China plans to increase the size of its marine corps from about 20,000 to 100,000 personnel to protect the nation’s maritime lifelines and its growing interests overseas, military insiders and experts have said.

Some members would be stationed at ports China operates in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and Gwadar in southwest Pakistan, they said.

The expanded corps is part of a wider push to refocus the world’s largest army away from winning a land war based on sheer numbers and towards meeting a range of security scenarios using highly specialised units. Towards that end, Chinese President Xi Jinping is reducing the size of the People’s Liberation Army by 300,000, with nearly all of the cuts coming from the land forces.

Military insiders told the South China Morning Post that two brigades of special combat soldiers had already been moved to the marines, nearly doubling its size to 20,000, and more brigades would be added. “The PLA marines will be increased to 100,000, consisting of six brigades in the coming future to fulfil new missions of our country,” one source said, adding the size of the navy would also grow 15 per cent. Its current size is estimated at 235,000 personnel.