Peoples Liberation Armys Military Operations Other Than War

Author : June Teufel Dreyer
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 40 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China's Strategic View written by June Teufel Dreyer and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the militant rhetoric of past decades has abated, the leadership of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is profoundly dissatisfied with the international status quo. The dissolution of the Soviet Union weakened China's ability to wrest concessions from the United States by threatening to move closer to the USSR, and from the USSR by threatening to support the United States. While some leverage can, and is, gained by negotiating with the major successor state to the Soviet Union, this leverage is more limited than in the past. The Russian Republic is significantly weaker than the USSR, and finds aid and investment from capitalist states such as the United States useful to its rebuilding efforts. It is unlikely to jeopardize this aid by becoming too closely associated with Chinese positions that these countries oppose. Other indications are that the Chinese leadership's goal is to replace the United States as the hegemonic power in the Asian region. It sees the PRC as an ascendant power while America, which has withdrawn from bases in the Philippines, downsized its military personnel, slashed its defense procurement programs, and consigned its navy to a littoral role, is seen as declining. Should China assume the role of hegemon, there are likely to be territorial readjustments in the region. The PRC contests ownership of several different islands and island chains with no less than six other countries, and there are concerns within India that the close relationship that has developed between China and the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in Burma may have a Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean as one of its goals. Though Sino-Indian relations have been quite good in recent years, there are unresolved issues between the two countries, and China's victory over India in a 1962 border war is a painful memory for many Indians. The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) plays a dual role in the country's strategic view: it participates in the formulation of strategy at the same time as it is charged with implementing that strategy. The apparent active involvement of higher echelons of the PLA in formulating national policy sets the Chinese military apart from the Western ideal in which politicians decide upon policy and the military implements it. Several caveats are in order here. Mao Zedong formulated a principle that is not very different from the Western ideal of the separation of army and politics: "the party must always control the gun; the gun must never control the party." And Clausewitz, though saying that "there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great strategic issue, nor of a purely military scheme to solve it," also cautioned that political leaders should be careful not to ask the impossible of the military, and advised them to consult with senior commanders in planning and conducting military operations.1 Finally, virtually all the recent information indicating that the PLA is exerting pressure for a harder line internationally comes from the Hong Kong press and cannot be confirmed through mainland sources. Hence, the dichotomy between the role of the military in the PRC and that in the West may be overdrawn. Analysts of recent Chinese foreign policy portray it as a struggle between soft liners and hard liners. Those who espouse a soft line believe that the PRC's best interests are served by negotiating settlements to China's territorial disputes with other nations and engaging foreign powers in dialogue on contentious issues such as trade disputes and intellectual property rights. Hard liners assume a more defiant posture. The doctrine of absolute sovereignty, the unilateral right of the PRC to annex territory it considers part of the sacred territory of China, and a skeptical attitude toward the claims of other countries characterize their stance.