People's Liberation Army





The People's Liberation Army, including strategic nuclear forces, and a army, navy,
and air force, serves as the military of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Its 2.8
million strong force makes it the largest army in the world. The PLA was
established in the 1920s as the military arm of the Communist Party of
China. It was originally named the Red Army. The People's Liberation Army's
insignia consists of a round device with a design of five stars and the
Chinese characters "ba-yi" (August 1, the anniversary of the 1927 Nanchang
Uprising), surrounded by wheat ears and cog wheels. (Use of the insignia is
governed by the 1984 Military Service Law.)

Organization

Within the PRC government, the PLA maintains a semi-autonomous existence.
The PLA reports not to the State Council of the People's Republic of China
but rather to two Central Military Commissions, one belonging to the state
and one belonging to the party. In practice, the two CMC's do not conflict
because their membership is almost identical.

By convention the chairman and vice-chairman of the Central Military
Commission are civilian members of the Communist Party of China, but they
are not necessarily the heads of the civilian government. It was the case
with both Jiang Zemin and Deng Xiaoping, that the retained the office of
chairman even after relinquishing their other positions.

In contrast to other nations, the Minister of National Defense of the
People's Republic of China is not the head of the military, and is in fact a
rather low ranking official.

Branches: People's Liberation Army (PLA), which includes the Ground Forces;
Navy (includes Naval Infantry (marines) and Naval Aviation); Air Force,
Second Artillery Corps (the strategic missile force); People's Armed Police
(internal security troops, nominally subordinate to Ministry of Public
Security, but included by the Chinese as part of the "armed forces" and
considered to be an adjunct to the PLA in wartime)

History

The People's Liberation Army was founded on August 1, 1927 during the
Nanchang uprising when troops of the Kuomintang rebelled under the
leadership of Zhu De and Zhou Enlai after the end of the first
Kuomintang-Communist alliance. They were known as the Red Army. Between 1934
and 1935, the Red Army survived several campaigns lead against it by Chiang
Kai-Shek and engaged in the Long March.

During the Sino-Japanese War, the Red Army was nominally integrated into the
Chinese national army forming the Eighth Road Army and the New Fourth Army
units. During this time, the Red Army used primarily guerilla tactics, but
also fought several conventional battles with the Japanese and the
Kuomintang.

After the end of the Sino-Japanese War, the Red Army renamed itself the PLA
and won a civil war against the Kuomintang.

During the 1950's, the PLA with Soviet help transformed itself from a
peasant army into a more modern one. One of the earliest operations was the
reoccupation of Tibet in 1950. In December 1951, the PLA intervened in the
Korean War as United Nations forces under General Douglas MacArthur
approached the Yalu River. Under the weight of this offensive, Chinese
forces captured Seoul, but were subsequently pushed back to a line roughly
straddling the 38th Parallel. The war ended as a standstill in 1953. In
1962, the PLA also defeated India in the Sino-Indian War.

Establishment of a professional military force equipped with modern weapons
and doctrine was the last of the "Four Modernizations" announced by Zhou
Enlai and supported by Deng Xiaoping. In keeping with Deng's mandate to
reform, the PLA has demobilized millions of men and women since 1978 and has
introduced modern methods in such areas as recruitment and manpower,
strategy, and education and training. In 1979, the PLA fought Vietnam in the
Sino-Vietnamese War.

In the 1980s, the PRC shrunk its military considerably on the theory that
freeing up resources for economic development was in the PRC's interest.

Following the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, ideological correctness was
temporarily revived as the dominant theme in Chinese military affairs.
Reform and modernization appear to have since resumed their position as the
PLA's priority objectives, although the armed forces' political loyalty to
the Communist Party of China remains a leading concern. One other area of
concern to the political leadership was the PLA's involvement in civilian
economic activities. Concern that these activities were adversely impacting
PLA readiness has led the political leadership to, with great success,
remove the PLA's business empire.

Beginning in the 1980s, the PLA tried to transform itself from a land-based
power, centered on a vast ground force, to a smaller, mobile, high-tech
military capable of mounting defensive operations beyond its coastal
borders. The motivation for this was that a massive land invasion by Russia
is no longer seen as a major threat, and the new threats to the PRC are seen
to be a declaration of independence by Taiwan, possibly with assistance from
the United States, or a confrontation over the Spratly Islands. In addition,
the economic center of gravity of mainland China has shifted from the
interior to the coastal regions and the PRC is now more dependent on trade
than it has been in the past. Furthermore, the possibility of a militarily
resurgent Japan remains a worry to the Chinese military leadership.

The PRC's power-projection capability is limited and one Chinese general
characterized China's military as having "short arms and weak legs". There
has however been an effort to redress these deficiencies in recent years.
The PLA has acquired some advanced weapons systems, including Sovremmeny
class destroyers, Sukhoi-27 and Sukhoi-30 aircraft, and Kilo-class diesel
submarines from Russia. However, the mainstay of the air force continues to
be the 1960s-vintage F-7 fighter. In addition, the PLA has attempted to
build an indigenous aerospace and military industry with its production of
the F-10, which reportedly contains technology supplied by Israel from its
Lavi fighter program as well as technology reverse-engineered from an F-16
reportedly given to the PRC by Pakistan. However, this effort has met with
limited success as evidenced by the purchase of military arms from Russia
and the delay in showing F-10 prototypes in November 2002 at an airshow in
southern China.

China's military leadership has also been reacting to the display of
American military might during the Gulf War.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the PLA became extensively involved in creating
a business empire including companies in areas not normally associated with
the military (i.e., travel and real estate). Much of the motivation for this
was to supplement the PLA's normal budget, whose growth was restricted.
Chairman Mao's belief that people and groups should be self-sufficient also
played a role in the PLA's varied business interests. In the early 1990s,
the leadership of the Communist Party and the high command of the PLA became
alarmed that these business transactions were in conflict with the PLA's
military mission. The business interests of the PLA were eroding military
discipline, and there were reports of corruption resulting from the PLA
businesses. As a result, the PLA was ordered to spin off its companies.
Typically, the actual management of the companies did not change, but the
officers involved were retired from active duty within the PLA and the
companies were given private boards of retired PLA officers. Military units
were compensated for the loss of profitable businesses with increased state funding.

Campaigns of the Red/People's Liberation Army

   * 1931 to 1945: War against Japan
   * 1945 to 1949: Chinese Civil War against forces of the Kuomintang
   * December 1951 to 1953: Korean War
   * August 1954 to May 1958: Taiwan Straits Crisis at Quemoy and Matsu
   * 1959: Occupation of Tibet
   * October 1962 to November 1962: Sino-Indian War
   * 1969 to 1978: Border skirmishes with Soviet Union
   * 1974: Sea battle near Xisha Islands with South Vietnam
   * 1979: Border skirmishes with Vietnam

PLA In Internal Security

In general, the PLA has been extremely reluctant to be involved in internal
security and views these sort of activities as a distraction from its
primary purpose of national defense. Responsibility for internal security
has been put into the hands of the paramilitary People's Armed Police, of
which the PLA generally has a low opinion.

The PLA has generally not been used for internal security but was used for
this purpose during the Cultural Revolution as it was the only national
institution to survive the turmoil. It was also deployed to quell
anti-government demonstrations in Tibet in 1989 as well as the crackdown of
the Tiananmen Protests of 1989.

Because the PLA has rarely been involved in internal security, public
opinion of the PLA is rather high especially when compared with the public
opinion of the Communist Party of China or the PRC government.

Technology

Nuclear Weapons

In 1955, Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party decided to proceed with a
nuclear weapons program. The decision was made after the United States
threatened the use of nuclear weapons against the PRC should it take action
against Quemoy and Matsu, coupled with the lack of interest of the Soviet
Union for using its nuclear weapons in defense of China.

It was developed with Soviet assistance until 1960. After its first nuclear
test in October 1964, Beijing has deployed a modest but potent ballistic
missile force, including land- and sea-based intermediate-range and
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). It is estimated that the PRC
has between 15-30 ICBMs capable of striking the United States with several
hundred IRBMs able to strike Russia.

The PRC's nuclear program appears to follow a doctrine of minimal
deterrence, which involves having the minimum force needed to deter an
aggressor from launching a first strike. The current efforts of the PRC
appear to be aimed at maintaining a survivable nuclear force by, for
example, using solid-fueled ICBMs in silos rather than liquid-fueled missiles.

The PRC became a major international arms exporter during the 1980s. Beijing
joined the Middle East arms control talks, which began in July 1991 to
establish global guidelines for conventional arms transfers, but announced
in September 1992 that it would no longer participate because of the U.S.
decision to sell F-16A/B aircraft to Taiwan.

The PRC was the first state to pledge "no first use" of nuclear weapons. It
joined the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1984 and pledged to
abstain from further atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in 1986. The PRC
acceded to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1992 and supported
its indefinite and unconditional extension in 1995. In 1996, it signed the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and agreed to seek an international ban on the
production of fissile nuclear weapons material.

In 1996, the PRC committed to not provide assistance to unsafeguarded
nuclear facilities. The PRC attended the May 1997 meeting of the NPT
Exporters (Zangger) Committee as an observer and became a full member in
October 1997. The Zangger Committee is a group which meets to list items
that should be subject to IAEA inspections if exported by countries, which
have, as the PRC has, signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In September
1997, the PRC issued detailed nuclear export control regulations. The PRC
began implementing regulations establishing controls over nuclear-related
dual-use items in 1998. The PRC also has decided not to engage in new
nuclear cooperation with Iran (even under safeguards), and will complete
existing cooperation, which is not of proliferation concern, within a
relatively short period. Based on significant, tangible progress with the
PRC on nuclear nonproliferation, President Clinton in 1998 took steps to
bring into force the 1985 U.S.-China Agreement on Peaceful Nuclear
Cooperation.

Chemical Weapons

The People's Republic of China is not a member of the Australia Group, an
informal and voluntary arrangement made in 1985 to monitor developments in
the proliferation of dual-use chemicals and to coordinate export controls on
key dual-use chemicals and equipment with weapons applications. In April
1997, however, the PRC ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and,
in September 1997, promulgated a new chemical weapons export control
directive.

Missiles

While not formally joining the regime, in March 1992, the PRC undertook to
abide by the guidelines and parameters of the Missile Technology Control
Regime (MTCR), the multinational effort to restrict the proliferation of
missiles capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction. The PRC
reaffirmed this commitment in 1994 and pledged not to transfer MTCR-class
ground-to-ground missiles. In November 2000, the PRC committed to not assist
in any way the development by other countries of MTCR-class missiles.

Land Mines

The PRC remains opposed to international agreements limiting the use of
landmines.

Military manpower

Military age: 18 years of age

Availability: males age 15-49: 363,050,980 (2000 est.)

Military manpower - fit for military service: males age 15-49: 199,178,361
(2000 est.)

Military manpower - reaching military age annually: males: 10,839,039 (2000
est.)

Military expenditures - dollar figure: $12.608 billion (FY99); note - The
actual amount of PRC military spending remains highly controversial. First
of all, the military may get resources which are not listed in the official
budget. Second, it is difficult to get agreement on the conversion factor
used to convert military expenditures to dollars.

Military expenditures - percent of GDP: 1.2% (FY99)

Miscellaneous

The PLA maintains a number of garrisons in the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region, notably at the former Prince of Wales Building,
Stonecutter's Island, and at Stanley Fort. Soldiers located at these
garrisons are considered to be the cream of the PLA, but are not permitted
to leave their compounds, even during off-duty times, to mingle with the
local populace. A contingent of local Hong Kong press was taken on a tour of
the Prince of Wales compound in 2002, and every year the Stanley Fort
compound is opened for inspection to the public.