China planning to vastly expand size of marine corps

摘要

China is planning to vastly increase the size of its marine corps "to protect the [country's] maritime lifelines and its growing interests overseas", the Hong-Kong based South China Morning Post (SCMP) newspaper reported on 13 March. Quoting military insiders, the paper claimed that the government in Beijing is planning to boost the number of marines from about 20,000 to 100,000, indicating that some of these troops would be stationed at the ports China operates in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and Gwadar in southwest Pakistan.