Reshaping the People’s Liberation Army since the 18th Party Congress: Politics, Policymaking, and Professionalism

ABSTRACT

Following the pivotal decision by China’s last paramount leader to change the course of China’s development in the latter years of the previous century, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has undergone profound changes that have enabled it transform itself more quickly than ever before. Under its current commander-in-chief, these developments have become more pronounced, with Xi Jinping taking a noticeably greater interest in harnessing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) coercive forces as his domestic powerbase and as a foreign policy instrument complementing his country’s hard economic assets. Following the 18th Party Congress, reforms to the PLA’s command and control functions have continued apace. It is thus timely to scrutinize the PLA’s continued efforts to further enhance its operational capabilities, in terms of both its hardware – including its hard power projection and procurement – and its heartware – the softer aspects of its development, such as its operational doctrine and military ethos. With the CCP keen to continue devoting substantial political and economic capital to strengthen the capabilities of its armed servants, the present period is a critical phase in the reshaping of the PLA into a force on par with the world's other advanced militaries.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• People’s Liberation Army
• civil-military relations
• foreign policy
• defense economics
• military modernization
• strategy

Introduction

Less than 3 years into his tenure as chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), Chinese president Xi Jinping played host to a significant event on 3 September 2015. Under the pretext of commemorating the 70th anniversary of China’s victory in World War II, Beijing witnessed a grand public display of the country’s most advanced weaponry as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) flaunted its achievements from more than two decades of military modernization. While the event was portrayed by China’s state media as testament to Beijing’s commitment to peace, most foreign assessments saw it as a demonstration of the PLA’s growing offensive capabilities. Indeed, it is widely believed that the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will continue to devote increasingly greater resources to further effect qualitative improvements to its coercive forces and enhance the PLA’s combat capabilities, in accordance with the civilian leadership’s desire to develop China into a maritime power.¹

China’s growing military prowess, along with Beijing’s shift away from ‘keeping a low profile,’ owes much to the policies of the Chinese Party-state, in particular, the continued expansion of the Chinese economy; a concomitant increase (in real terms) of military expenditure; and, above all, a strong and unwavering commitment on the part of China’s civilian leadership to build a powerful, modern armed forces. To be sure, this military buildup has been matched by Beijing’s noticeably more assertive behavior in the East and South China Seas, and can be accounted by improvements in Chinese military hardware and enhancements to two of the PLA’s previously neglected services: the PLA Navy and the PLA Air Force. While structural changes to the Chinese military in terms of its materiel and power projection capabilities have heightened the prospects for it to play a key role in Beijing’s foreign and security policymaking,² its new commander-in-chief has synchronously taken a noticeably greater interest in harnessing the PLA as a foreign policy instrument to complement Chinese economic diplomacy.

The heightened status of the Chinese military in the domestic and international calculus of the current Chinese leader owes much to the qualitative structural improvements of the PLA, and in the larger context of a more complex security environment. Although it has become increasingly convenient to attribute changes in China’s strategic posture to Xi Jinping’s style of leadership, there remains a dearth of literature that parses, analyses, and explains the role played by the PLA since the changing of the guard, and which has opened a potentially perilous phase in Beijing’s reemergence as a great power. With this in mind, this special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies dedicates itself to the study of the recalibration of the PLA’s strategic thinking, roles, and missions following the 18th Party Congress. Based on papers presented at a conference organized by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) held over 2 days in October 2015, the articles in this special issue seek to document the progress made by the PLA since the Chinese leadership transition, in terms of both its military hardware – chiefly, the projection and procurement of its hard power assets – and its heartware – the softer elements of its evolution, including the PLA’s relationship with the civilian leadership and its leverage over national security and foreign policymaking. In light of the latest round of Chinese military modernization, there could not be a more opportune moment to take stock of the headway the PLA has made since the realization of its previous operational weaknesses.³

Surveying the key themes in the field, this brief introduction will attempt to summarize the findings of the articles, namely (1) the politics of the PLA, in particular, the state of Chinese civil–military dynamics following Xi Jinping’s declaration of war against military malfeasance; (2) the role of the PLA in China’s foreign and security policymaking, focusing on the military aspects of Chinese activities in recent regional flashpoints and the PLA’s role in Beijing’s efforts to build a ‘new type of great power relations’ with Washington; and (3) the Chinese military’s growing professionalism, pertaining to new developments in its power projection capabilities in the period up to the recently announced administrative and operational reforms, in addition to those enhancements to the PLA’s defense technology base in the larger scheme of the country’s defense–industrial complex. These augmented capacities of the Chinese military corps will be crucial if Beijing’s strategic depth is to successfully catch up with its present global economic heft.⁴

Politics of the PLA and Chinese Civil–Military Relations

In assessing the CMC chairman’s signature anticorruption campaign since his ascension to power, Char’s exposition of the strategic interactions between Chinese civilian and military elites⁵ documents the modus operandi in Xi Jinping’s purge of the very institution that would determine his political survival calculus. Having witnessed the lackluster ‘reign without rule’ of Hu Jintao–in large part due to the former commander-in-chief’s lack of military authority–the incumbent has since maneuvered against PLA leaders who had disobeyed civilian authority under the previous administration. In so doing, Xi has combined psychological intimidation with institutional mechanisms to impose authoritative civilian control over the military as well as strengthen his own powerbase to dominate his rivals in China’s Party-state-military nexus. Changes to China’s civil–military dynamics, however, are still at a nascent stage, and it remains unclear whether the CMC chair’s growing clout would translate into long-term meaningful changes to the PLA’s organizational structure and operational culture. Nevertheless, Xi’s strongman persona and hands-on approach in national security reforms now places him in a stronger position than any other Chinese leader in the post-Reform era to reshape the CCP’s coercive forces.

The PLA in Chinese Foreign and Security Policymaking⁶

That the strategic nature of the bilateral state-to-state and military-to- military relations between the US and China (now) impinges on global security is without doubt. In the two contributions on Sino–US military interactions by You as well as Saunders and Bowie, there is growing evidence suggestive of the increasing attention China’s civilian leadership has accorded military elites coinciding with Beijing’s shift toward a more ambitious foreign policy. As China continues to reconfigure its national strategies to mitigate the challenges in an increasingly complex security environment – of which its defense planners perceive US military presence in the region as the most threatening – You’s attempts at situating the causality behind PLA response toward US surveillance in the South China Sea is a somber reminder of the potential for the peer competitors to enter an irreversible free-fall in bilateral ties. Referring to the US military’s close-in reconnaissance activities in China’s coastal waters and the PLA’s corresponding intercepts as a ‘cat-and-mouse’ game, You acknowledges that while the US and China clearly value their overall bilateral relations, deep strategic mistrust and military activities at the operational level ultimately means that crisis management mechanisms at present may become difficult to maintain in future.

Continuing with the negative outlook, Saunders and Bowie proffer that – despite the fact that a number of platforms between the PLA and its American counterpart have been facilitated (–) China’s attempts at building a ‘new type of military-to-military relations’ and more generally, a ‘new type of great power relations,’ are yet to constitute a major turning point in Sino–US relations. While the two have been able to establish a number of potentially important memoranda of understanding, increasing military competition in the space, cyber, and nuclear domains, coupled with increasing air and naval interactions between their militaries, invariably means that a previous pattern of on-again, off-again military relations continues to persist.

PLA Professionalism: Power Projection and Procurement

The articles by Blasko and Pollpeter chart the progress of the PLA from a military angle.⁷ Blasko notes that Xi Jinping’s desire to enhance the joint operation command authority under the CMC and theater joint operation command systems is the result of a clear shift toward developing a modern force structure commensurate with China’s present national security interests.⁸ In addition to the reduction of mostly army personnel, adjustments to the CMC structure as well as the abolishment of the four General Departments and the seven Military Regions – with the latter replaced with five Theater Commands – all point to the optimization of the PLA’s battlefield disposition and strategic pre-positioning. That said, these changes – given that the CMC and Theater Commands are still dominated by personnel from the ground forces – may still lead to increased interservice rivalry. Blasko further concludes that despite the PLA’s shift in emphasis from ‘winning local wars under conditions of informationization’ to ‘winning informationized local wars,’ greater innovation in the PLA’s strategy will still be required in view of its soldiers’ lack of combat experience, as well as the requirement for China’s defense personnel to adapt to a growing number of new tasks.

Following the theme of conducting modern warfare, Pollpeter analyzes a new theater of war and highlights how the space domain – as one of five components constituting a major military threat to Beijing (the others being conventional, nuclear, nuclear-conventional, and cyber) – has been alluded to by Chinese military strategists as ‘a commanding height in international strategic competition.’ In particular, the CCP leadership has prioritized the advancement of the PLA’s military capabilities in space, with the latter having been set a target of achieving a global, 24-hour, all-weather earth remote sensing system by 2020. Having established the Strategic Support Force to command its space forces, Pollpeter cautions that the higher priority given to this new theater by the PLA – coinciding with similar moves by the US – may constitute dangerous escalatory elements to potential confrontations in this new war domain between the two military forces.

Cheung and Bitzinger, in their respective papers on China’s defense economics,⁹ both note of progress and problems in China’s defense–industrial sector with regard to the PLA’s procurement. Cheung observes that Beijing’s recent successes in acquiring and exploiting foreign technologies have enabled China’s defense–industrial complex to shorten its research and development by as much as 5 years. Utilizing a four-step strategy of introduction, digestion, assimilation, and re-innovation (or IDAR, for short), Cheung emphasizes that China seems to be able to meet most of its short-term defense needs for now. Nonetheless, challenges stemming from institutional weaknesses inherent in the Chinese defence-industrial complex and a dearth of regulatory frameworks could yet hamper its national defense building.

Bitzinger’s treatise on the PLA and Chinese defense industry reforms reaffirms the CCP civilian leadership’s desire to hone the PLA’s overall war-fighting capabilities. In spite of the increasing costs of development and production concomitant with indigenous research and development of the PLA’s most advanced weapons systems, Bitzinger states that Beijing, regardless, has made research, development, and acquisition a key objective, and simultaneously shifted from imitation toward innovation. While it has achieved less than desirable outcomes in the design, development, and manufacture of advanced conventional armaments, Chinese civilian and military elites – driven by the desire to make armaments production more efficient and cost-effective – have become even more motivated to experiment with additional reforms in this sector in an attempt to upgrade their country’s technology base and defense manufacturing capabilities.

Concluding Remarks

While much of the prevailing analyses on the regional security landscape have hitherto focused on Beijing’s emerging naval capabilities¹⁰ – and fittingly so – it is equally vital to scrutinize other lesser-known aspects of the PLA’s development. The articles in this compendium will hopefully serve to illuminate other larger ‘black boxes’ in the study of ongoing trends in the field of PLA studies, and bring us closer to a more authoritative assessment of China’s prospects of attaining the two centenary goals in Xi Jinping’s ‘China Dream’ by helping Beijing reclaim its position as one of the world’s leading powers. In light of the regime’s increasingly muscular approach in building islands in the South China Sea and its growing sophistication in launching cyber campaigns, our study also provides clues about the role of the military in China’s elite decision-making. It is our hope that these papers on the PLA’s strategic recalibration will help lay the groundwork for glimpsing into the longer-term prospects for it to transform into a professional fighting force akin to most contemporary militaries at the conclusion of Xi’s tenure, and thereafter.

If anything, the writings reaffirm that – outstanding inadequacies in its hardware and heartware notwithstanding – enhancements to the PLA in the period hitherto have since provided China with the means to deal with a greater number of contingencies and new missions further away from its mainland. While there remain much room for improvement before the PLA can hope to conduct complex informationized joint operations encompassing all domains, the process of strengthening and consolidation will continue. Despite the challenges that lie ahead (under the specter of China’s slowing economic growth), the latest military reforms are indicative of the CCP’s resolve to effect fundamental transformations of its armed wing. Whereas Dengist economic reforms may have provided the platform for the PLA’s improved materiel capabilities, the military modernizations initiated by Xi following the 18th Party Congress have set the stage for reshaping the PLA into a force on par with the world’s leading militaries. Indubitably, the Chinese military is now at a critical phase of its evolution, and its success - or lack thereof - will have a bearing on whether Beijing adheres to its strategic values of ‘peace’ and ‘development’ as its martial prowess continues to rise.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies (IDSS) of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) for its support in organizing the conference ‘Reshaping the People’s Liberation Army Since the 18th Party Congress’ in October 2015 in Singapore. Our appreciation extends to the chairpersons, presenters, discussants, and participants at the conference for their valuable contributions to the proceedings, which were ably supported by the excellent administrators at RSIS. We are also grateful to Thomas G. Mahnken and Joseph A. Maiolo of the Journal of Strategic Studies and to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Char

James Char is Senior Analyst with the China Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He is the inaugural Wong Wai Ling Scholar in the Masters of Arts in Contemporary China (MACC) at NTU. His current research interests center on Chinese domestic politics, civil–military relations in China, as well as China’s diplomatic strategies in the Global South.

Richard A. Bitzinger

Richard A. Bitzinger is Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the Military Transformations Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, where his work focuses on security and defense issues relating to the Asia-Pacific region, including military modernization and force transformation, regional defense industries and local armaments production, and weapons proliferation. Mr. Bitzinger has written several monographs and book chapters, and his articles have appeared in such journals as International Security, Orbis, China Quarterly, and Survival. Notable publications include Towards a Brave New Arms Industry? (Oxford University Press, 2003), ‘Come the Revolution: Transforming the Asia-Pacific’s Militaries,’ Naval War College Review (Fall 2005), and ‘Military Modernization in the Asia-Pacific: Assessing New Capabilities,’ Asia’s Rising Power (National Bureau of Asian Research, 2010). He is also the editor of The Modern Defense Industry: Political, Economic and Technological Issues (Praeger, 2009) and the author of Arming Asia: Technonationalism and Asian Defense Industries (Routledge, forthcoming).

Notes

¹ The official work report of the 18th Party Congress elevating Xi Jinping to the apex of Chinese leadership is notable for its declaration to develop Beijing into a maritime power. See ‘Hu calls for efforts to build China into maritime power’, Xinhua, 8 Nov. 2012.

² It has been documented, for instance, that Beijing continues to indulge its military elites’ predilection for assertive rhetoric, despite such actions playing into the hands of Washington’s rebalance. Li Mingjiang, ‘The People’s Liberation Army and China’s Smart Power Quandary in Southeast Asia’, Journal of Strategic Studies 38/3 (2015), 359–82.

³ American military prowess demonstrated in the first Persian Gulf War has commonly been acknowledged as a turning point in China’s modern military modernizations. See, for example, You Ji, The Armed Forces of China (New South Wales, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1999) and David Shambaugh, Modernising China’s Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects (Berkeley CA: University of California Press 2002).

⁴ The PLA Daily has recently highlighted that while China’s national defense and military capacity building may have improved significantly, military power remains a ‘deficit’ among other indicators of Chinese comprehensive strength, adding that ‘economic development’ and ‘national defense building’ should jointly proceed and together embody China’s ‘key strategic goals.’ See ‘Tongchou tuijin jingji jianshe he guofang jianshe ronghe fazhan [Promote the overall development of economic construction and national defense construction convergence]’, 12 Aug. 2016.

⁵ Scholarly assessments of the CCP-PLA dynamic can be found in David Shambaugh, ‘The Soldier and the State in China: The Political Work System in the People’s Liberation Army’, The China Quarterly 127 (Sept. 1991), 527–68; James Mulvenon, ‘China: Conditional Compliance’, in Muthiah Alagappa (ed.), Coercion and Governance: The Declining Political Role of the Military in Asia (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press 2001), 317–35; and Ellis Joffe, ‘The Chinese Army in Domestic Politics: Factors and Phases’, in Nan Li (ed.), Chinese Civil-Military Relations: The Transformation of the People’s Liberation Army (Abingdon: Routledge 2006).

⁶ On the PLA’s influence in China’s foreign policy, see Michael D. Swaine, ‘China’s Assertive Behaviour Part Three: The Role of the Military in Foreign Policy’, China Leadership Monitor, 36 (2012), 1–17; You Ji, ‘The PLA and Diplomacy: Unraveling Myths about the Military Role in Foreign Policy Making’, Journal of Contemporary China, 23/86 (2014), 236–54; and more recently, Phillip C. Saunders and Andrew Scobell (eds.), PLA Influence on China’s National Security Policymaking (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press 2016).

⁷ Some of the previous studies on Chinese power projection in this journal include M. Taylor Fravel, ‘Securing Borders: China’s Doctrine and Force Structure for Frontier Defence’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 30/4–5 (Aug.–Oct. 2007), 705–37; Thomas G. Mahnken, ‘China’s Anti-Access Strategy in Historical and Theoretical Perspective, Journal of Strategic Studies, 34/3 (Jun. 2011), 299–323; and Thomas J. Christensen, ‘The Meaning of the Nuclear Evolution: China’s Strategic Modernization and US-China Security Relations’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 35/4 (Aug. 2012), 447–87.

⁸ Although mooted at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, this latest round of military reforms was only made official in late November 2015.

⁹ Other notable analyses include Tai Ming Cheung, ‘The Chinese Defence Economy’s Long March from Imitation to Innovation’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 34/3 (Jun. 2011), 325–54; Mulvenon, James and Rebecca Samm Tyroler-Cooper, China’s Defence Industry on the Path of Reform (Washington, DC: US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, October 2009); and Tai Ming Cheung, ‘Dragon on the Horizon: China’s Defence Industrial Renaissance’, Journal of Strategic Studies 32/1 (Feb. 2009), 29–66.

¹⁰ See, for example, Alessio Patalano and James Manicom, ‘Rising Tides: Seapower and Regional Security in Northeast Asia’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 37/3 (2014), 335–44.