China's Military EDITORS' NOTE-Early in its history, the Chinese Communist Party became concerned with developing a military arm as an instrument for carrying on its struggle for power. Out of this preoccupation grew the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, however, altered the contextual framework in which the PLA functioned and raised fresh questions with respect to it. For example, what was to be its role in the domestic political system, and how was it to be employed in the service of the new government's foreign policy? These issues have retained their significance throughout the period of Communist rule on the mainland of China. The following two articles explore them with an accent on the contemporary situation. Mr. Joffe looks at the history of PLA involvement in civil affairs in an effort to assess recent changes in the character of the PLA's internal political role. Mr. Fraser attempts to piece together the available evidence to arrive at some judgment about how the Chinese rulers conceive the purposes for which the PLA may be used in the international arena today. The PLA in Internal Politics By Ellis Joffe n the past decade, but especially since the late 1960's, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has played a central if somewhat fluctuating role in the politics of the People's Republic of China (PRC).' Starting with a limited intrusion into the political process in the early 1960's, the army went through several phases of deepening political involvement which culminated in large-scale intervention and a takeover of civil functions by the military in the closing stages of the Cultural Revolution. The Mr. Joffe is Associate Professor in Chinese Studies and International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of Party and Army: Professionalism and Political Control in the Chinese Officer Corps, 1949-1964, 1965, and has contributed articles to various scholarly journals on Chinese military affairs. | political rise of the army then triggered a reaction which led to a reversal of the trend toward military predominance and a gradual disengagement of the military from politics. The process of disengagement is still a long way from completion, however, and there is no telling how far it will go. Meanwhile, the army retains considerable political power. In short, the political role of the Chinese army is currently in a state of flux and has not yet settled into a stable mold. An assessment of this role cannot, therefore, focus on a given point in time; instead, one has to look at the whole process of increasing military intervention in-and subsequent disengage 1 In Chinese usage, it should be noted, the term "People's Liberation Army" encompasses air and naval forces as well as ground forces. Throughout the following discussion, the shorthand designation "army" will be used in this sense. ment from China's political affairs. It is the purpose of the present article to provide a brief overview of this process. The First Decade came to play after that, and an appreciation of this difference is essential to an understanding of how the army's involvement in Chinese politics has changed over the years. To look more closely at the early period, when the Chinese Communist forces swept over the mainland in the final phases of the civil war, the political power of the new regime was initially established and consolidated in the conquered areas by the PLA units which had moved into those areas. During the regime's first few years, until party and government institutions were able to take over the tasks of administration throughout the country, local administration was carried out largely by the military au For more than a decade after the establishment of the PRC, the army did not actively intervene in Chinese politics per se. This does not mean, of course, that the army's role was strictly confined to carrying out purely military functions. On the contrary, during this whole period but especially during the first few years of the new regime, the army was deeply involved in performing a wide range of non-thorities. For this purpose, the country was divided military tasks that had devolved upon it as a legacy into six major regions, each controlled by a Militaryfrom the pre-1949 revolutionary period as well as in Administrative Committee, with most of these comresponse to current needs, and that added a unique mittees headed by military men. At subregional political and social dimension to its conventional levels, local administration was exercised through military role. Despite this fact, however, the role of Military Control Committees, again set up and domithe People's Liberation Army (PLA) until the mid-nated by military personnel. Thus, until 1954, when 1960's was qualitatively different from the role it the abolition of the Military-Administrative Com A group of PLA soldiers returning to their barracks near Nanning after participating in a road-building project, one of the various nonmilitary tasks performed by the army, especially in the early days of the Communist regime. -Marc Riboud/Magnum. mittees completed the transfer of power to civilian institutions, local government was largely dominated by the military in most areas of China." The involvement of the military in political affairs in this early period, however, differed in several key respects from the military dominance that developed in the latter part of the 1960's. First, the military in the early period acted throughout the country as an arm of a unified leadership in Peking, whereas in the latter part of the 1960's the army entered the political arena as a participant in a power struggle that split the leadership. Second, the army in the initial years assumed political and administrative functions under the direction of the party because the party had not yet developed the necessary mechanisms for carrying out these functions, whereas the military in the later stages of the Cultural Revolution took over civil tasks because the dismantling of the party apparatus under the assaults of the Red Guards had created a vacuum. Third, in the early period there was little role differentiation between the top civilian and military leaders, whereas by the mid-1960's functional specialization and professionalism had developed to a point where 2 See John Gittings, The Role of the Chinese Army, London, Oxford University Press, 1967, esp. Chap. 9; and Ying-mao Kau, The People's Liberation Army and China's Nation-Building, White Plains, N.Y., International Arts and Sciences Press, 1973, esp. Chap. 3. 3 Gittings, op. cit., pp. 263-71. civilian and military leaders were members of distinct and frequently competing bureaucratic hierarchies. To sum up, in contrast to what happened in the latter 1960's, the party in the early 1950's delegated important functions to the army, but a united party leadership retained firm control over the military. And, for its part, the army aided the party but did not compete with it or pose a challenge to its position of primacy. This early relationship between the party and army was strikingly evidenced by the smooth transfer of power from military to civilian organs. Although many observers predicted at the time that the military would not relinquish its grip on the regional levers of authority and that China would fall back into some form of warlordism, nothing of the sort occurred. Instead, once the civilian organs were ready to assume the tasks of administration, the military withdrew swiftly and quietly from civil political affairs. To be sure, the PLA continued to perform a wide variety of nonmilitary tasks-from spearheading mass campaigns to helping the peasants at harvest time-but it did so under party direction and control. The subordination of the army to the party does not mean, of course, that the military did not chafe under party direction or that the party-army relationship was free of stresses and strains. Quite the opposite was true. The modernization of the Chinese army, which was greatly accelerated by the Korean War, brought into being a professional officer corps, composed partly of young graduates of the newlyfounded military academies and partly of veteran commanders who reoriented their thinking along more professional lines. This officer corps developed professional military perspectives on military strategy and organization that differed in several fundamental respects from the party leadership's politicallyoriented approach to military matters, and in the policymaking councils the military tended more and more to act as a pressure group advocating its own views on subjects affecting the armed forces. Consequently, from about 1955 until the dismissal in 1959 of the then Minister of Defense, Marshal P'eng Tehhuai, the party-army relationship was increasingly strained by controversy and conflict over a wide spectrum of military issues." These conflicts, however, did not extend to the basic issue of overall party control over the military, and they were played out within the implicitly accepted parameters of dissent and debate. When the party leadership turned down the demands of the military, the decisions were accepted by the army in disciplined fashion. In short, the military vigorously advocated their views, but the army did not move out of its barracks to force acceptance of those positions. Thus, during the 1950's, the military participated in political and civil affairs on two levels: as a force assuring the execution of national policies in the localities and as an opinion group in decision-making forums. On both levels, however, military participation was characterized by the army's subordination to party control and by its noninterference in the resolution of political conflicts. Against this background, the gradually deepening involvement of the military in politics during the 1960's represented a clear break with the pattern of the preceding decade, and it is erroneous to view it as a linear development and merely an extension of the military's previous role. The Genesis of Political Involvement The transformation of the pattern of military participation began gradually and almost imperceptibly in the early 1960's in response to a changing political situation. Dominating this situation was the incipient intraparty conflict over power and policy that was to explode with untrammeled fury several years later in the Cultural Revolution. Fueled by the failure of the Great Leap Forward and centering on the fundamental issue of China's developmental strategy, the conflict entered a critical phase after 1962 as those party leaders opposed to Mao's insistence upon steering China along a more revolutionary course sought to evade his directives by blocking them on the level of policy implementation. As the gap between declaratory policy and actual implementation widened, Mao and his supporters became increasingly disenchanted with the party bureaucracy and its top leaders. This disenchant 4 Ibid., pp. 271-79. 5 On these developments, see the author's Party and Army: Professionalism and Political Control in the Chinese Officer Corps, 1949-1964, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1965. ❝ On this period, see the author's Between Two Plenums: China's Intraleadership Conflict, 1959-1962, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, No. 22, 1975; and Stuart R. Schram, "The Cultural Revolution in Historical Perspective," in Stuart R. Schram, Ed., Authority, Participation and Cultural Change in China, London, Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp. 69-85. ment led Mao to the conclusion that it was necessary to shake up the party and to reinfuse it with revolutionary values in order to overcome its bureaucratic ossification. To this end, Mao turned to the army. Under the leadership of Lin Piao, who had replaced P'eng Teh-Huai as Defense Minister in 1959, the problems caused by the growth of professionalism in the officer corps had been overcome, and the army's revolutionary qualities had been revived. While Lin's program within the army prudently maintained a balance between political and professional requirements, there is no doubt that the revolutionary vigor of the PLA in the early 1960's contrasted sharply with the increasing bureaucratism and unresponsiveness of the party apparatus. Consequently, Mao began to use the PLA in order to prod the party, with the result that the army was drawn into the political arena-not, as previously, to carry out the policies of a united leadership, but rather to support the Maoists against other groups in an increasingly divided leadership.' The initial impetus for this new type of military involvement in politics thus came from outside the army rather than from within it. Although it is clear that the military leadership, or at least the dominant group within it, willingly responded to Mao's initiative, it seems equally clear that the military leaders could hardly have foreseen that this new involvement in politics would eventually lead to the army's elevation to the top of the power pyramid-a dramatic development that reached its culmination amidst the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution and could not have been predicted, or even desired, by most of the leaders, both political and military. There is therefore no basis for maintaining, as many analysts have, that the army's entry into politics in the early 1960's was the first step in a grand design conceived by the military under Lin Piao to capture political power in China. As far as can be determined, the political ascent of the army was neither planned nor predetermined, but was rather the product of unforeseen and, at least to some military leaders, unwelcome circumstances. The Chinese military, in short, did not grab political power; instead, political power gravitated to the military through a complex process extending over several years. 7 See the author's "The Chinese Army Under Lin Piao: Prelude to Political Intervention," in John M. H. Lindbeck, Ed., China: Management of a Revolutionary Society, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1971, pp. 343-74. This process began to unfold in 1963 with a series of countrywide campaigns highlighting the revolutionary qualities of the army and holding it up as a model for the nation to follow. The purpose of the campaigns was a limited one: to reinvigorate the party by infusing it with a revolutionary spirit and style of work, but not to replace it in its leading role by the army. Starting with drives publicizing individual army heroes and model units, the campaigns reached a high point in 1964 with a major national movement to "learn from the army." As part of this movement, a new apparatus modeled on the army's political branch and staffed by military officers was established in governmental and economic organs to ensure that the army's political techniques would be copied and carried out. The party, however, stiffened its resistance and intensified its tactics of subtly sabotaging Maoist directives. As the contrast between the party and the army from the Maoist perspective sharpened, the stage was set for the epic struggle between the Maoists, supported by the military, and the party. This was the genesis of the Cultural Revolution." But while Mao, in unleashing the Cultural Revolution, relied on the army as his power base, the role of the military in the early phases of the upheaval continued to be limited. For the period until the end of 1966, a distinction must be drawn between the parts played by the military leadership itself and by the army as a nationwide organization. The central army command did, indeed, play a pivotal role from the beginning of the Cultural Revolution struggle, rendering crucial support to the Maoists, but the army as a whole remained for the time being on the sidelines, although it did provide logistical and (probably) organizational support to the Red Guards.1o (probably) Active Military Intervention The character and extent of the army's involvement in the Cultural Revolution changed sharply after January 1967. In what was probably the single most important decision affecting the role of the military, the army was ordered to intervene in the Ibid. Also see Gittings, op. cit., pp. 254-58. See the author's "The Chinese Army Under Lin Piao," loc. cit., pp. 365-66, and A. Doak Barnett, Uncertain Passage: China's Transition to the Post-Mao Era, Washington, DC, The Brookings Institution, 1974, pp. 76-79. 10 Ibid., p. 79. struggles that were then raging in many parts of China. This dramatic transformation of the army's hitherto limited role was plainly the product of fastmoving events rather than of Maoist or military planning. By the end of 1966, many Chinese cities were hovering on the edge of chaos as a consequence of the actions of the Red Guards in seeking to take over power from the local party, government, and other organizations. These actions had the effect of paralyzing the local administrative hierarchies and producing power vacuums, and the only national organization capable of taking effective charge of the situation was the army. However, owing to the temporary preponderance of the radical forces in the central party leadership, the army was directed to intervene not for the purpose of restoring order, but rather to aid the "revolutionary" forces in "seizing power." 17 11 In the eyes of many in the professional officer corps, military intervention in an internal political conflict was not a welcome development. In fact, some of the senior army commanders vigorously opposed it, predicting (correctly, as it turned out) that the embroilment of the army in factional conflicts would subject it to dangerous strains and possible internal splits. Even though their opposition was overridden, they proceeded to exert every effort— while pledging verbal allegiance to Maoist slogansto stem rather than to aid the revolutionary forces.12 Their efforts, furthermore, were clearly coordinated with those of the moderate elements in the central leadership. The upshot was that in most areas the army intervened in local conflicts not as an ally of the revolutionary radicals, but rather as a stabilizing and moderating force. Instead of helping the Red Guards to establish a new political order based on the "revolutionary masses," the army engineered a compromise arrangement to place authority in the hands of Revolutionary Committees based on a "triple alliance" of army representatives, veteran officials, and representatives of the Red Guards. In practice, local army commanders generally tended-partly in the interests of order and partly because of personal connections-to side with the veteran officials against the Red Guards in the strife that promptly developed over the distribution of power in the Revo 11 For the text of the directive ordering the PLA to intervene, see Current Background (US Consulate General, Hong Kong), No. 852, pp. 49-50. 12 See Stanley Karnow, Mao and China: From Revolution to Revolution, New York, Macmillan, 1972, pp. 276-86. PLA garrison troops in Tsinghai Province marching in a demonstration on the occasion of the formation of the Tsinghai Provincial Revolutionary Committee during the Cultural Revolution. -China Pictorial (Peking), No. 11, 1967, p. 13. lutionary Committees. Owing to this protracted strife, the formation of the committees became a long and arduous process, and pending their establishment, the army set up Military Control Committees which assumed major political and civil functions in the localities, in effect replacing the party." The efforts of the army to curb the activities of the Red Guards, which split into a bewildering array of radical organizations, gave rise to constant conflict in many areas of China. Attacked by the radicals for damping down the fires of revolution, the army responded with differing degrees of toughness, de 13 Ibid., pp. 292, 297. |