Thread: Why no China?
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Old 09-18-2018, 03:33 PM
Olefin Olefin is offline
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from the same link above as well as other sites including the wikipedia entry which heavily draws on Warden, Robert L.; Savada, Andrea; Dolan, Ronald;; Library of Congress, Federal Research Division (1988). "China: A Country Study". pp. 582–3

Under the system used in the 1980's that the game designers based the Chinese Army on for the game a field army consisted of three partially motorized infantry divisions and two regiments of artillery and anti-aircraft artillery.

Each field army division had over 12,000 personnel in three infantry regiments, one artillery regiment, one armored regiment, and one anti-aircraft artillery battalion. Each division was supposed to have its own armor and artillery but there was very little information to actually show was actual equipment levels they had.

In 1987 the new, main-force group armies typically included 46,300 soldiers in up to four divisions, believed to include infantry, armor, artillery, air defense, airborne, and air support elements. Those mobile armies were supposed to be mobile and capable of combined arms operations but because there was a lack of mechanization they still mostly consisted of foot infantry, usually transported by trucks at best, with armor and artillery support.

The 13 armored divisions each had 3 regiments and 240 main battle tanks but most didnt have much in the way of mechanized infantry support or APC's and tanks were used often as mobile artillery. There was some self-propelled artillery but rocket launchers were more often what was used for fire support.

Engineering equipment was available but there wasnt a lot of mine-laying or mine-clearing equipment which left the Chinese formations vulnerable to mine fields.

Artillery was mostly towed guns, howitzers and truck mounted multiple rocket launchers

Regional forces - i.e. independent divisions - were used as garrison units, mostly being static units to defend cities, coastlines or borders, and were artillery heavy but lacking in armor or transport. They were also used to train militia as well

Keep in mind that there are close to three million members of the People's Liberation Army Militia as well

Thus given the size of their military and adding in the Police and Militia you can see why no attempt to ever release a Chinese Army book was ever done - especially considering by 2000 there wasnt a Chinese Army anymore
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