China’s People’s Liberation Army is a huge military operation consisting of millions of enlisted personnel. According to Statista data, China boasts the highest number of active military personnel in the world, with 2,185,000 people as of 2021.
Chinese military personnel are split up among five military branches, including Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, Rocket Force and the Strategic Support Force.
The Chinese military units are spread around the wide-spanning country at five theatres of command, which are based on geographical location.
Second to China in terms of army size is India, which has 1,445,000 active military personnel, and the US narrowly comes in third place with 1,400,000.
In descending order in terms of army size, the top 10 countries consist of China, India, the US, North Korea, Russia, Pakistan, South Korea, Iran, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.
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At the bottom of the Statista analysis is Bangladesh, with an army of 204,000 active military personnel.
But the UK does not feature on the rankings at all, perhaps because the UK actually has a comparatively small army in relation to other countries.
All of the aforementioned top 10 countries for army size have larger armies than the UK does, as do other countries such as Egypt, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey.
The UK’s European neighbour France also has a larger army than the UK, with 270,000 active military personnel in 2021.
US President Joe Biden announced earlier this year that the US’s long presence in Afghanistan would end during his first presidential administration.
But the fall of the Afghan capital of Kabul in August 2021, while the US was preparing to leave the country, was widely regarded as a failure for Mr Biden and his UK allies.
A scramble ensued to evacuate US and UK military personnel, diplomatic staff and Afghan refugees before the Taliban-enforced deadline of August 31.