power would be less reluctant to relinquish their authority-this despite the attachment which they, like all powerholders, could be expected to have developed to their new positions regardless of their original intentions. Whatever the mix of reasons, it is clear that the central leadership moved with caution in its attempt to whittle down the political power of the military. This was most evident in the nature of the denunciations esoteric at first and straightforward thereafter-leveled at Lin Piao and his comrades. While these denunciations (some of which were without doubt fabrications) were often severe and even vicious, they drew a clear line between Lin Piao and the army. On some points, most notably military resistance to party direction, the deviations attrib-tempt to make them hand power back to party func uted to Lin Piao had plainly been widespread throughout the army; nevertheless, the leadership took pains to distinguish Lin's behavior from that of the rest of the army and to blame him and his small coterie of associates for all the wrongdoings of the military establishment.30 But if the leadership treated the army gingerly, it was not prepared to tolerate the entrenchment of military leaders in key positions of power as a permanent feature of Chinese politics. From the viewpoint of the party leaders of all persuasions, this was an abnormal and ominous situation that violated the cherished principle that "the party commands the gun" and raised the danger of military dictatorship (a danger which the Russians gleefully claimed had already materialized in China). In short, it was a situation that had to be rectified. Back Toward Party Primacy In assessing the dimensions of this task and the regime's ability to accomplish it, certain considerations must be borne in mind. If one assumes, as many outside observers have, that the army's intervention in the Cultural Revolution was part of a military plan to capture political power, then one would have to conclude that the military leaders would strongly resist any attempt to dislodge them from the positions they had acquired. If, on the other hand, one believes, as the author has earlier argued, that the active involvement of the army in the political struggle of the Cultural Revolution was unforeseen, and that the army was ordered to intervene over the opposition of important elements in it, then it is conceivable that under certain conditions military commanders newly entrenched in political 30 E.g., Anhwei Provincial Radio, Dec. 12, 1971; Yunnan Provincial Radio, Dec. 13, 1971; Hainan Island Radio, Sept. 8, 1973; Shanghai Radio, July 31, 1974; Canton Radio, Sept. 8, 1974; also, "Outline of Education on Situation for Companies," loc. cit., p. 97. What, then, are these conditions? The behavior of military leaders during the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent period of party reconstruction points to at least one negative condition, namely, that military commanders were determined to resist any at tionaries who were known to be radicals. If, however, this obstacle were removed, it can be assumed that other factors favoring a scaling down of the military's political power would cumulatively carry much greater weight. These factors include Mao's charismatic authority and political skill, the discipline of the military commanders and their commitment to the principle of party supremacy, and the presumed desire of professional officers to withdraw from the bruising arena of politics. Although there surely are tensions between veteran party cadres and military commanders, both presumably share a basic vision of the desired social order that enables them to cooperate effectively, as they have in the past. As experience has convincingly demonstrated, the same can hardly be said of the army officers and radical activists.31 These considerations clarify the close connection that exists between the rehabilitation of veteran, conservative party cadres hounded from office by the radicals during the Cultural Revolution and the disengagement of army officers from positions of political authority. The connection was amply underscored by the actions of the Tenth CCP Congress in August 1973, which formalized the rehabilitation of important party leaders and at the same time reduced the representation of the military in the party's policymaking organs. The proportion of military figures among the full members of the newly-chosen Tenth Central Committee dropped by some 14 percent and stood at about 30 percent, and in the Politburo the proportion of army representatives declined from about one half to one third." While the military still retained an important voice in these 31 See Roderick MacFarquhar, "China After the 10th Congress," The World Today (London), December 1973, pp. 520, 523. 32 These rehabilitations inspired attacks by radical leaders, which became one of the major themes of the "anti-Lin Piao, antiConfucius" campaign in 1974. See ibid., pp. 522-23, and Chang, "The Anti-Lin Piao and Confucius Campaign ...," loc. cit., esp. pp. 878-80. 33 Same source cited in footnote 15. bodies, the trend toward a reduction of their influence was apparent. This trend was further reinforced by the shifts of regional army leaders announced by the regime in January 1974. After having left the powerful regional commanders, who concurrently held top provincial party and administrative posts, untouched for more than two years after the fall of Lin Piao, the central leadership carried out a sweeping reshuffle affecting seven of the existing commanders of the eleven military regions. Six exchanged places in straight swaps, while the seventh was transferred to the vacant post of commander of the Peking Military Region, with his former regional post being assigned to the head of the PLA's General Political Department."4 The reshuffle had several important implications. First, it meant a significant strengthening of the central leadership's control over the regional commanders. By removing them from their bases of power, in which some of them had been entrenched for many years and had doubtless built up networks of political and personal relationships, the center curbed their considerable local autonomy. Second, it meant that the leadership had dislodged some of the most powerful regional commanders from their top local political positions. All but one of the transferred commanders had held the post of provincial party first secretary or chairman of the provincial Revolutionary Committee, and they were not given corresponding positions at their new posts. Third, the fact that the transfers could be effected without trouble once again highlighted the professional military officers' high degree of discipline and the army's strong commitment to the center. In sum, even though, as of mid-1975, 13 of the 29 provincial party first secretaries and chairmen of Revolutionary Committees remained military men, the reshuffle constituted a major step toward stripping the regional military leaders of political power. Still another step toward reasserting the party's political control over the army was the appointment in early 1975 of Teng Hsiao-p'ing, a top party and government leader who had been denounced during the Cultural Revolution, as PLA Chief of Staff. Since Teng has no professional military background and is unlikely to devote much time to military affairs, his appointment was probably designed to place a leading party man acceptable to the army because of his conservative orientation in this sensitive post. The concurrent appointment of Chang Ch'un-ch'iao, a party ideologue, as head of the army's General Political Department, a post previously held by a professional officer, likewise underlined the reassertion of party primacy over the military and was obviously intended to tighten the ideological orthodoxy of the armed forces. It probably reflected some sort of compromise, too, since Chang is identified with the radical wing of the leadership. Both appointments serve to point up the extreme complexity of Chinese military politics a phenomenon already evidenced by the fact that the posts of army Chief of Staff and Minister of Defense had remained unfilled ever since the time of Lin Piao's fall.35 (Several other top General Staff positions which had been occupied by officers who fell with Lin Piao also remained vacant for a long time, or still are.) In sum, the precise political role of the army in the aftermath of its intervention in the Cultural Revolution and of the Lin Piao Affair still remains somewhat obscure and uncertain, and the same holds true of the party-army relationship in general and the state of intramilitary politics. Arching over the uncertainties, however, are two processes that can be discerned with a fair degree of certainty-i.e., the gradual, step-by-step disengagement of the army from the political arena and the reassertion of party control over the military. Given the mysterious workings of Chinese politics, it would be hazardous to predict how far these trends will proceed. It would also be hazardous to speculate on what role the military is likely to play in the post-Mao succession process; however, in light of the developments of the past decade, it must be recognized that the precedent has been set for military intervention in a political struggle. 34 For details of the reshuffle, see Current Scene, (Hong Kong), February 1974, pp. 19-24. The need to tighten control over regional military commanders was apparently another theme of the anti-Lin, anti-Confucius campaign (see Merle Goldman, "China's Anti-Confucian Campaign, 1973-74," The China Quarterly, September 1975, p. 441). 35 Another possible reason for the appointment of Teng as Chief of Staff may have been the inability of rival army factions to agree on a military man for this post. The appointment of Yeh Chien-ying, a 76-year-old army man, as Defense Minister was formalized at the National People's Congress session in January 1975. Use of the PLA in Foreign Affairs By Angus M. Frazer In attempting to develop an appreciation of the Chinese concept of the use of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in foreign affairs, of course, one cannot automatically accept this statement at face value, for ideology and internal social arrangements have an obvious, pervasive effect on Chinese perceptions of things. Thus, such Chinese (or, more properly, Communist) concepts as "just" and "unjust" wars pose difficulties because their definitions depend not on some disinterested authority but on the Chinese themselves. Nonetheless, the available evidence suggests that Peking has over the years employed the PLA in foreign policy operations essentially in accordance with the constitutional principles just set forth and Colonel Fraser has worked as a research analyst and consultant for the Institute for Defense Analyses and the Historical Evaluation and Research Organization since he retired from the US Marine Corps in 1964. His publications include The People's Liberation Army: Communist China's Armed Forces, 1973; a contribution to Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress, China: A Reassessment of the Economy, 1975; and articles in such journals as Pacific Community, Asian Affairs, and the Naval Institute Proceedings. in a manner consistent with that in which other nations historically have employed their armed forces. Such a proposition is certainly supported by an assessment of past PRC military actions, or threats of action, in terms of certain broad categories of the classical uses of armed forces in the pursuit of foreign policy. It is further bolstered by analyses of the style and content of Chinese military assistance programs, of Chinese military doctrine, and of the force structure, improvement plans, and actual deployment of the PLA. This article will look in some detail at the evidence in each of these spheres. It will also attempt to gauge the prospects for Peking's continued adherence to its concept of the employment of the People's Liberation Army in foreign affairs. The PLA in Foreign Policy Execution In the present context, two elements are of key importance in examining the PRC's past military actions and threatened actions: the motivations behind these actions and threatened actions, and the degree of correspondence between the general goals pursued and the purposes for which nations have historically employed armed forces in foreign policy undertakings. Apropos of the first consideration, it should be borne in mind that the PRC has a number of basic foreign policy objectives. Harold Hinton has conveniently summarized these as security, power, unification, and influence. With respect to the sec 1 See Peking Review, Jan. 24, 1974, p. 15. Emphasis added. Article 10 of the old Constitution adopted in 1954 contained similar language. See Jan F. Triska, Ed., Constitutions of the Communist Party States, Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, 1968, p. 92. 2 Communist China in World Politics, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966, Chap. 4. ond consideration, a list of traditional purposes for the employment of armed forces in the international arena would include: (1) The physical defeat of an opponent. In this case, a nation's precise motivations may differ from instance to instance, and the participants in a given confrontation may have divergent views about what motivates that particular confrontation. But the goal is always a clear-cut military victory that would lead to a settlement of the conflict in favor of the victor. This purpose has been especially manifest in clashes over territory, whether crude seizures of land or recoveries of irredenta. (2) The intimidation of another nation. The objective here is to persuade the target that the primary factor does indeed have the ability to punish and the will to use it. Situations which have caused nations to adopt such a course have often arisen from a desire to strengthen a politico-military bloc or a wish to develop insulation against a more powerful third country. (3) Deterrence of an attack. In this case, the goal is to convince an opponent, by visible means, that an attack would not produce returns that would justify the damage he would incur in retaliation for the attack. Such a purpose has been apparent primarily in contexts involving the preservation of national security. (4) The control or protection of another nation. The reasons why such control or protection is deemed desirable may vary greatly from situation. to situation, but the underlying purpose remains the same. The existence of such an end has been most apparent in situations in which troops have actually been stationed in the "protected" territory. (5) The training and equipping of a friend or ally. In this case, a hope to gain influence in the recipient country may prompt a state to take action. The establishment of formal military assistance programs, which have often gone hand in hand with. mutual security arrangements, has provided the best evidence of such a purpose. (6) The assertion of status. In the international realm, it is generally believed that a nation should have military forces commensurate with its economic and political position in the world; conversely, the possession of "forces in being" confers a kind of status that should, by international consensus, admit the power having them to the councils and deliberations of other powers of the same rank. This objective has been particularly manifest in relation to discussions of arm control and disarmament, where actual forces have constituted the bargaining counters of negotiation. Let us, then, look briefly at the armed actions of the PRC in terms of the two considerations already mentioned. The PLA operations in Tibet, Hainan, and Quemoy in 1949 and the aborted plan for an assault on Taiwan proper in 1950 must be classified as "mooping-up" actions in an ongoing civil war rather than expressions of purely foreign policy attitudes and goals; nonetheless, the Peking leadership has engaged in a significant number of armed actions relevant to our discussion since assuming de facto control of mainland China in 1949.3 Korea. The Korean war has been by far the PRC's largest combat involvement since the closing period of the Chinese civil war. That the war broke out so soon after the protracted Chinese civil war raises: serious questions about whether Chinese foreign policy goals were a factor in its initiation, but there is no doubt that the Chinese decision to intervene reflected fundamentally Chinese calculations. What these were remains a matter of some debate. In a thorough and interesting treatment of the subject," Allen S. Whiting quotes an account by the Indian ambassador to Peking of a meeting with Nieh Jungchen, Acting Chief of Staff of the PLA, in September 1950 in which Nieh indicated that "China would not sit back with folded hands and let the Americans come up to the Sino-Korean border." Elaborating on this statement, Nieh acknowledged the danger of entering into a conflict with the US but insisted that the latter could not defeat China. Elsewhere in his book, Whiting goes on to say regarding Chinese motivations: we have stressed the political importance of intervention in relation to its expected effect on US-Japanese relations, China's role in Asia, and the security of the regime against subversion or attack 3 There is a massive body of material that touches in one way or another on the PRC's military experiences. In the ensuing analysis, the author has drawn not only on the sources specifically cited but also on Samuel B. Griffith II, The Chinese People's Liberation Army, New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1967; Neville Maxwell, India's China War, London, Jonathan Cape, 1970; Alexander L. George, The Chinese Communist Army in Action, New York, Columbia University Press, 1967; and a host of journal and magazine articles. The treatments of the several engagements, however, are entirely the author's and are designed to cover those issues directly relevant to the subject of this article, not to be exhaustive discussions of the events dealt with. 4 China Crosses the Yalu, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1960. Chinese troops crossing the Yalu River on October 25, 1950, marking the entry of the PRC into the Korean War. from domestic anti-Communist groups assisted by American or Nationalist forces, or both. ... While Whiting discounts the element of concern that the Chinese may have felt over Manchuria, others have emphasized Peking's perceived need to guard Manchuria against invasion, reinforced by the need to rescue North Korea and to forestall Soviet action that might be harmful, as the prime factor in the Chinese decision." In the absence of any declaration from Peking, one cannot make a firm judgment on the relative merits. of these interpretations of the political perceptions and goals that lay behind Chinese entry into the war. Nonetheless, it seems safe to say that the PRC intervened well beyond China's borders (albeit over a continuous and secure line of communications) and accepted serious risks and high costs in the process for a range of reasons which included at least some, if not all, of those noted above. Moreover, none fell outside the bounds of purposes for which nations have traditionally resorted to the use of armed forces. The Taiwan Strait. Since 1949, the Taiwan Strait has constituted a restless divider between the PRC and the Republic of China in a still unresolved civil war. The discrete acts and random encounters that 5 See, for example, Hinton, op. cit., p. 26. -China Pictorial (Peking), No. 12, 1970, Special Supplement, p. 7. have occurred over the years there may all be viewed as incidents in that civil war, but exterior powers also played important roles in the major events of 1954, 1958, and 1962. In early September 1954, the Chinese Communists began heavy artillery shelling of some of the Nationalist-held islands between the China mainland and Taiwan especially Quemoy, the largest of the islands and not yet the military fortress that it was later to become. Taipei undertook air action in reply. This move inevitably drew the United States into the situation, for by this time the United States had become heavily reinvolved in Chinese affairs after a brief period of disengagement in the late 1940's. In January 1950, President Harry S. Truman had disavowed any US interest in bases on Taiwan and had declared that Washington would not provide military assistance or advice to the Nationalist government, but in June of the same year, two days after the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, he had interposed the Seventh Fleet in the Strait to contain Communist forces and had urged Taipei to stop offensive actions against the mainland. In early 1951, military assistance had been put on a formal basis, and by 1954, the US was fully engaged in the organization and equipping of Nationalist armed forces. The reasons for the PRC's actions in 1954 remain somewhat obscure, although the heavy military pressure that it applied carried with it the threat of an |