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People's Liberation Army

Equipment

Detailed listings of PLA equipment holdings are rather scarce in the unclassified literature. This surely reflects some combination of deficiencies in Western intelligence concerning the Chinese military, inefficiencies in the seepage of classified intelligence appreciations into the open literature, as well as disinterest on the part of open-source analysts in doing detailed beancounts, which is understandable given the paucity of data and limited audience for such exercises.

It would be interesting to have a better appreciation of Chinese equipment holdings, both to judge current military capabilities, as well as to assess modernization trends. This is particularly important in the case of the PLA, given the proliferation of new Chinese weapon systems that are either developed soley for export, or that have apparently failed to arouse interest from the PLA itself.

The annual The Military Balance by the International Institute of Strategic Studies as well as the annual The World Defense Almanac by the publishers of Military Technology provide the most readily available sources, which have been used here. A close reading of these invaluable references, however, makes it clear that their listings of equipment types leaves something to be desired. In more than a few instances, specific types of equipment are listed as being in inventory for a particular year, dropped in subsequent years, then re-appearing in the inventory list, as though they had been on vacation. Reasonably well-attested pieces of hardware are in some cases absent from these lists, and a few items are listed concerning which the more detailed online sources are entirely silent.

Traditionally Chinese weapons were given a simple "Type" designator consisting of a two digit year of manufacture or proposal followed by the Chinese word for 'type', and the description of the weapon. More recently designations have been based on a combination of Pinyin letters and numbers that are independent of the year of manufacture. Thus, a YW represents Armored Personnel Carrier and a WZ represents Armed Vehicle. In addition, in recent years systems that have been developed for export, or developed by a manufacturer but not yet accepted for service by the PLA, have unique designators but no associated "Type" nomenclature.

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