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Chinese Army Bases - Overview

Locating and identifying Chinese ground force facilities is a difficult task for a number of reasons. First, China is not particularly known for its military transparency and foreigners are not generally permitted to visit many of the Army's facilities. Second, the United States Government is also very careful with its own information regarding the Chinese military and annual reports offer little in the way of real information, though the annual Directory of PRC Military Personalities does allow one to determine the place names associated with particular units.

Open-source literature, such as Jane's Sentinel Security Assessment: China and Northeast Asia also appears to be based on the Directory, though it does not specify how or where it gets its information. An additional source of information would consist of the exploitation of declassified or commercial imagery and declassified intelligence documents. Unfortunately, much of the declassified material is dated and the information provided may not be totally accurate as facilities may have been closed or forces located at those installations have changed.

This listing of Chinese ground forces facilties is based primarily upon information arising from the Directory, Jane's resources, and a declassified photo intelligence report produced by the Central Intelligence Agency in March 1966. The document called, "Compilation of Military Vehicles and Equipment in CHICOM Ground Forces Installations" was produced by the Imagery Analysis Division and details by location the type of facility that is at a certain place name and what type of equipment had been identified at those locations.

Efforts to verify current operations at these locations or to discover new facilities is an inherantly difficult process as facilities do not tend to be items of discussion or research by most China watchers. While commercial satellite imagery might be useful in discovering PLA facilities, the costs of undertaking such a project are prohibitive as virtually all of China would have to be analyzed.

Furthermore, as the ground truth imagery below indicates, Chinese efforts at disguising military locations are extremely effective at preventing detection of some locations by overhead imagery, especially without the benefit of collateral information.