23rd Group Army
The 23rd Group Army, headquartered in Heilongjiang, is comprised of one motorized infantry division, two motorized infantry brigades, an armored brigade, an artillery brigade, a AAA brigade, a communications regiment, and an engineer regiment.
The 23rd Group Army traces its lineage back to the Chinese Red Army of the early 1930s and elements of the New Fourth Army of the late 1930s. The first unit that the 23rd Group Army can clearly trace its lineage to is the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, formed in the early 1940s. By 1945 the 3rd Brigade had been reorganized and redesignated as the 3rd Column and by 1946 the unit was again redesignated, this time as the 4th Column. By 1949 the 4th was reorganized and redesignated as the 23rd Corps, 8th Army. The 23rd was comprised of the 67th, 68th, and 69th Divisions. (Whitson)
The 23rd Corps took part in the Chekiang and Fukien Campaign of the Civil War. (Whitson)
Until its September 1952 deployment to Korea, the 23rd Corps was part of the defenses of the Shantung coast area. In 1958 the 23rd Corps was reassigned to the Peking Military Region and throughout the late 1950s and 60s the unit was located in Kirin. (Whitson)
This unit took part in the Korean war and participated in the 1969 Sino-Soviet border clashed.
In September 2003 Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po reported that as part of the 200,000 troop reduction announced by the Chinese government, the 23rd Group Army would be inactivated along with two other group armies, the 63rd and the 24th. It is not clear if the troop reduction will include the inactivation of the Group Army's subordinate units.
