This is because while" 军" in Chinese means "corps" when classifying by size or number of troops, it also means (and more frequently so) in common and less precise military usage – any significant grouping of combat troops, such as army, Army group, or even entire military branch.
While some formations, such as the 1st Army, survived for over fifty years, a number were quickly amalgamated and disestablished in the early 1950s.
[note 3] The 36th and 37th Armies appear to have both been broken up in February 1952, and both may have been reorganised for engineering tasks.
In March 1967, the Central Intelligence Agency identified some 35 field corps:[6] In the mid-1980s, Deng Xiaoping began to redefine PLA orientation radically, beginning with a reassessment in 1985 of the overall international security environment that lowered the probability of a major or nuclear war.
The natural consequence of this sweeping reassessment was an equally comprehensive reorientation of the Chinese military.
The number of military regions was reduced from 11 to 7, and the 37 field armies were restructured to bring "tank, artillery, anti-aircraft artillery, engineer, and NBC defense units under a combined arms, corps-level headquarters called the Group Army.
The reform in 2015 was a major restructuring of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), which flattened the command structure and allowed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to have more control over the military, with the aim of strengthening the combat capability of the PLA.