Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T00:19:34.298Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The People's Liberation Army and the People's Republic at 50: Reform at Last

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

David Shambaugh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The People's Republic of China (PRC) may not have had the opportunity to celebrate 50 years of statehood had it not been for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) – nor, for that matter, is it likely that the PRC would have come into existence in the first place were it not for the PLA (as is evident in Mao's often-cited observation that, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun!”). As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rode the military to power in 1949, the army also subsequently acted on several occasions to rescue the regime, maintain the Party in power and ergo sustain the People's Republic. The PLA has also been the designated protector of “state sovereignty” and “unifier” of China – acting to incorporate Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Manchuria and border regions in the south-west and north-west during the early 1950s, and fighting several border wars against China's neighbours thereafter – and it is the PLA that is ultimately charged with ensuring both that Taiwan does not seek “independence” and that China's territorial claims in the East and South China Seas are protected.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 159 , September 1999 , pp. 660 - 672
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Some revisionist histories question the degree to which the CCP came to power as the result of a “revolution.” It may be more appropriate to consider the CCP's ascension to power and the establishment of the PRC as the result of a combination of the collapsing Kuomintang state and the military victory won by the PLA (then Red Army) over KMT forces on the battlefield. The revisionist view is expressed, for example, in my “The building of the civil-military state in China, 1949–1965: bringing the soldier back in,” in Cheek, Timothy and Saich, Tony (eds.), The Construction of State Socialism in China, 1949–1965 (Armonk, NY: ME. Sharpe, 1996).Google Scholar

2. Particularly nuclear weapons and air, sea and ground-based ballistic missiles delivery systems.

3. These are traced in Jencks, Harian W., From Muskets to Missiles: Politics and Professionalism in the Chinese Army, 1945–1981 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Nelsen, Harvey W., The Chinese Military System (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997 and 1981)Google Scholar; Joffe, Ellis, The Chinese Army After Mao (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

4. For a sampling of this study see Pillsbury, Michael (ed.), Chinese Views of Future Warfare (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

5. China has over 12,000 miles of land frontiers, over 11,000 miles of coastline, 1.86 million square miles of claimed territorial waters, and 30,000 square kilometres of naval air space to protect. Interview, PLA General Staff, 6 December 1998.

6. See Godwin, Paul H.B., “From continent to periphery: PLA doctrine, strategy and capabilities toward 2000,” in Shambaugh, David and Yang, Richard H. (eds.), China's Military in Transition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Godwin, , “Chinese military strategy revised: local and limited war,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 519 (01 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Godwin, , “Changing concepts of doctrine, strategy, and operations in the Chinese People's Liberation Army, 1979–1987,” The China Quarterly, No. 112 (12 1987)Google Scholar; Li, Nan, “The PLA's evolving warfighting doctrine, strategy, and tactics, 1985–1995: a Chinese perspective,”Google Scholar in Shambaugh, and Yang, , China's Military in TransitionGoogle Scholar; Shambaugh, David, “The insecurity of security: the PLA's evolving doctrine and threat perceptions towards 2000,” Journal of Northeast Asian Studies, Vol. XIII, No. 1 (Spring 1994)Google Scholar; and Johnston, Alastair I., “China's new ‘old thinking’: the concept of limited deterrence, International Security, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Winter 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. The best study of PLA demobilization is Shichor, Yitzhak, “Demobilization: the dialectics of PLA troop reduction,”Google Scholar in Shambaugh, and Yang, , China's Military in Transition.Google Scholar

8. Ding, Arthur S., “The streamlining of the PLA,” Issues & Studies (11 1992), pp. 92–93.Google Scholar

9. Ironically, the U.S. military gives its field commanders far greater individual authority.

10. A Special Arms Department (Te hing bu) was formed under the General Staff Department and combines and fulfils procurement needs for these units.

11. Interview with former General Staff Department official, 8 December 1998.

12. Interview, National Defence University, 16 July 1998.

13. See Mulvenon, James, “Military corruption in China,” Problems of Post-Communism (03/04 1998), pp. 12–21.Google Scholar

14. Interview, General Logistics Department, 9 December 1998.

15. Ibid. This figure rises considerably at and above the group army level, and among those who graduate from the National Defence University.

16. “Army seeks mobility in force cuts,” Janes Defense Weekly, 16 12 1998.Google Scholar

17. For an explication of this thesis see my “The soldier and the state in China: the political work system in the People's Liberation Army,” The China Quarterly, No. 127 (09 1991), pp. 527–568.Google Scholar

18. The National Defence Law must also be seen as part of a larger and important process to govern military procedures through law and regulations. In the last decade nearly 120 military-related regulations have been adopted by the CMC, State Council and National People's Congress, as well as more than 1,000 rules and regulations adopted by individual PLA service arms and Military region commands. Source: China's National Defense (Beijing: Information Office of the State Council, 1998), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

19. “Air Force frontliners to see new fighter breed,” Janes Defense Weekly, p. 26.Google Scholar

20. “New PLAN to train, purchase vessel mix,” Janes Defense Weekly, 16 12 1998, p. 25.Google Scholar

21. Stokes, Major Mark A., “China's strategic modernization: implications for U.S. national security,” unpublished manuscript, 1997Google Scholar; and Pillsbury, , Chinese Views of Future Warfare.Google Scholar

22. Stokes, , “China's strategic modernization.”Google Scholar

23. See the articles in Shambaugh, and Yang, , The Chinese Military in Transition.Google Scholar