Dark Earth Orders of Battle

Yes, Steve is quite right. It isn't in the Soviet camp, but hasn't had any of the disasters associated with the Great Leap Forward, won't have a Cultural Revolution, had rather more of a better time between 1900 and 1937 and did not stagnate to the same degree between 1860 and 1899 as it did in @.

Weighed up against this is the impact of being an active front in the Great War as part of the first extremely bitter Civil War, but overall, China is well ahead economically and industrially of where it stood in 1960.

The leadership can be quite ruthless, but there is a greater chance of some form of earlier rapprochement with the West, which would further open up trade.

I've been putting together some thoughts on the Hong Kong/China security situation and will put them up here soon.

Currently, they have the following forces:

Land: The equivalent of a division with some tanks and artillery, a full AA regiment, substantial coastal artillery,
Air: 72 RAF and 48 RNAS fighters, 64 Bloodhound SAMs
Sea: 2 frigates,4 corvettes, 4 gunboats and various smaller patrol vessels.

This force is augmented by an Indian brigade and the tripartite Royal Hong Kong Defence Force. The latter consists of the Hong Kong Regiment (4 battalions), the Royal Hong Kong Volunteers (4 battalions) and the Hong Kong Chinese Regiment (4 battalions).

Under the plans set out in the 1961 Defence White Paper for the consolidation of British forces on Imperial deployments, this force will be beefed up by a British Army Sikh division, two armoured regiments, artillery, certain RN warships and a small number of RAF squadrons.

The borders of Hong Kong itself are somewhat expanded, encompassing the entire of Bao'an County.

The primary border is a 50 mile band of light fortifications stretching from Taiping to Autou consisting of a heavy triple layered fence interspersed with minefields, anti tank ditches and dragon’s teeth.

There are two further main defensive lines built in the 1930s. The secondary line lies 10 miles to the rear of the border and stretches from Baoan-Pinghu-Mirs Bay. It consists of a triple layered minefield supported by infantry pillboxes and fortified casemates for artillery with preregistered fields of fire; these are currently consist of twenty-four 6" howitzers. Forty WW2 Cromwell superheavy tank turrets have been dug-in

The tertiary line from Deep Bay to Mirs Bay consists of 500 infantry pillboxes, 20 support casemates with 25pdr field guns and 5 large armoured fortresses with eight 6” guns and four 8” howitzers. There are protected firing positions for heavy and superheavy artillery on the rear slopes of hills in what we would consider the New Territories.

It is based on the historical 17th Gurkha Division operated by the British Army in the 50s and 60s. As part of general consolidation, the Gurkha and Sikh units of the British Army will be organised into a number of field forces, consisting of divisions (12 battalions) and brigades (3 battalions):

17th Gurkha Division (Malaya)
18th Gurkha Division (Suez)
19th Sikh Division (Burma)
20th Sikh Division (Hong Kong)

Gurkha Brigades (Kenya, Borneo, Aden, Persian Gulf)

There is a Gurkha Parachute Battalion and a number of Gurkha Commando units.

Just in the British Army; Indian Army paratroop units are drawn from their own Parachute Regiment.

As outlined in the orbat, there are 36 Parachute Battalions in the Indian Army.