Order of Battle of Chinese Armed Forces

Chinese PLA ground forces

July 2022, UPDATE 1: I have decided to compile all this data and some updates in to e-book format which will be hopefully finished later this year. I intend to keep it free, but if you want to support the effort, you can consider checking my Patreon or Amazon Authors page. Thanks.

July 2022, UPDATE 2: During the rewrite, I’ve found a number of mistakes in the geo-location. The units are mostly correct, but a few have errors with the published address and corresponding coordinates. The process of corrections is going on.

August 2022, UPDATE 3: One new post about Chinese Radars and SAMs has been added and one about Rocket Force has been updated. See links below. These are available as PDFs and text here and e-books on Amazon.


I started researching about ORBAT (Order of Battle) of India, China and Pakistan in earnest after starting to write a military thriller Kaalkut. My aim at first was just to get a somewhat detailed idea of the forces which could be used to write a realistic scenario, but it turned in to a detailed project by itself. Main problem with searching anything about China is unreliability of data as most of the information sources are tightly controlled by the communist government and the language barrier. Only a few other sources exist like a handful of military and civilian experts, pictures, maps and some books. So what was supposed to be just background research for the book, turned out to be a whole topic by itself, worthy of a short series of posts on the website.

I have spent a lot of time collecting and verifying this data from a number of sources which are listed here. This information may be outdated in a few years or perhaps months due to rapid changes still going on. Some posts will have only partial information which I may add later. Due to volume of data, I’ve divided the whole thing in to multiple posts linked below.

  1. Reorganisation of Chinese Armed Forces.(Updated: Oct 2022)
  2. Composition Of Ground Forces (Updated: Sep 2022)
  3. Ground Forces ORBAT (Updated: Sep 2022)
  4. Rocket Forces ORBAT (Updated: Aug 2022)
  5. Air Force ORBAT
  6. Navy ORBAT
  7. Radars and SAMs (Updated: Sep 2022)
  8. JLSF, SSF, Military Factories and Badges (Oct 2022)
  9. List of all Chinese airfields with units (Jan 2023)
  10. Fuel infrastructure (Feb 2023)

All this data and more in e-book format: https://amzn.to/3SVlxJw

Answers to a few frequently asked questions:

1. Yes, you can use all data by giving credit via backlinks.

2. I’ll publish nearly all data, free for everyone on this site, sooner or later.

3. If you want it sooner than others or need raw data, use https://patreon.com/jjamwal . If you work for government, some spy agency, armed forces or similar organisations, please prove your identity first.

4. If you need my assistance in some of your projects, it will cost you.

9 thoughts on “Order of Battle of Chinese Armed Forces

  1. What an impressive compilation work! That’s possibly hundreds of hours of research there.
    Would you be so kind to quote your sources ?
    There are great books and see what you did used would help sort them out.
    All the best from Belgium ;)

  2. It’s really amazing to see your work,i would like to copy some of your work 😉, only if you permit me .
    Im just a novice btw.

  3. Really Good data. apricated work and time spend on this .. I want these details

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