So how have the Historic Missions influenced the PLA? Did Hu simply give a speech that the mili-tary promptly ignored? Or does the milimili-tary simply provide lip service to the new requirements of these missions? This chapter argues that the missions have indeed been internalized by the PLA, strengthening some programs and policies that were already in place and creating new ones where nothing existed before.
This section of the chapter provides an overview of some of the more likely Chinese military develop-ments over the past 8 years that appear to strongly correlate with—if not directly flow from—the new mission set that Hu provided to the PLA. It is not a thorough discussion of everything that the PLA has done, or that could potentially be connected to the New Historic Missions. In particular, this section points out three developments: reinforcing PLA loyalty to the CCP, strengthening the PLA’s ability to defend China’s maritime territorial interests, and improving the PLA’s capabilities to safeguard China’s expanding overseas interests. Each is briefly discussed in turn.
Reinforcing PLA Loyalty to the CCP.
As demonstrated previously, the first—and likely most important—mission of the New Historic Mis-sions calls upon the PLA to reinforce its loyalty to the Party. This idea of CCP control over the military is succinctly summarized in Mao Zedong’s statement
at the 1929 Gutian Conference that “the Party com-mands the gun and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.”60 At this conference, Mao and his supporters established a system whereby the CCP was thoroughly embedded within the PLA, and the PLA made subordinate to Party rule.61 Although a staple of civil-military relations in China for over 8 decades, in recent years the call to ensure CCP con-trol of the military seems to have strengthened. For example, a PLA Daily editorial claimed on the 85th anniversary (2012) of the founding of the PLA that
“[w]e must more solidly and more effectively improve ideological and political building, guarantee that the forces will resolutely obey the party’s command and be absolutely loyal and reliable.”62 In a 2012 article in the CCP’s premier journal, Qiushi (
求是
), Du Jincai, deputy director of the GPD, emphasized the need “to strengthen ideological and political education within the PLA,” and asserted that the priority tasks for the PLA are to “firmly follow the Party’s instructions and show absolute loyalty to the Party.”63 Not all of these calls come from military sources, either. Interestingly, China’s 12th Five Year Program notes the emphasis on strengthening the PLA’s loyalty to the Party:We will enhance the army’s ideological and political building; persist in the basic principle and system of the Party’s absolute leadership over the army; persist in the fundamental purpose of the people’s army;
greatly carry forward the excellent tradition of follow-ing the command of the party, of servfollow-ing the people, and of being brave and of good at fighting; and nur-ture the core value concept of the contemporary revo-lutionary army men.64
Many of these calls to strengthen CCP control over the PLA simultaneously emphasize the need to resist attempts to separate the PLA from the Party. This no-tion is captured under the oft-seen calls to resist the
“erroneous thinking” to “remove the Party [from the military]” (
非党化
), “de-politicize [the military]”(
非政治化
), and “nationalize [the military]”(
国家化
)—in other words, to make the military ulti-mately beholden to the state and not the CCP.65Strengthening the PLA’s Ability to Defend China’s Maritime Territorial Interests.
Several high profile developments over the last year show the development of PLA capabilities to safeguard China’s disputed maritime territories in the East and South China seas. Three are noted below:
1. Increasing PLA Navy (PLAN) patrols of dis-puted maritime territories: Demonstrating the ability to safeguard China’s disputed maritime territories in the East China Sea, a PRC Ministry of National De-fense spokesman stated in September 2012 that the PLAN would patrol disputed maritime areas such as the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, asserting that “it is en-tirely proper and lawful for Chinese naval vessels to carry out routine combat-readiness patrols and train-ing in waters under our jurisdiction.”66 China’s 2013 Defense White Paper clearly asserts that the PLA has a role to play in both defending China’s maritime inter-ests in the region, as well as backing up other Chinese government agencies tasked with the same mission—
such as China’s civil maritime forces.67 Recent media reports of PLA Navy vessels patrolling the waters near the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands demonstrate that these are not simply empty statements.68
2. Coordination with civilian maritime enforce-ment agencies: Answering a question about PLA responses to the ongoing Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands tensions with Japan, a Chinese Ministry of National Defense (MND) spokesman stated that:
the Chinese military cooperates closely with the ma-rine surveillance, fisheries administration, and other such departments, providing security support for the state’s enforcement of laws at sea, fisheries production, oil and gas development, and other such activities.69
This statement was further developed in China’s most recent Defense White Paper, which, for the first time ever, contained a section detailing how the PLAN is coordinating with and reinforcing efforts by civilian maritime forces to safeguard “China’s maritime rights and interests.”70 A notable example of this coordina-tion occurred during the 2009 “Impeccable Incident,”
when a PLAN auxiliary general intelligence vessel and a PRC Bureau of Maritime Fisheries patrol vessel, a PRC State Oceanographic Administration patrol ves-sel, and two Chineseflagged fishing vessels harassed the United States Naval Ship (USNS) Impeccable in the South China Sea.71
3. Development of a nascent aircraft carrier capa-bility: Although China purchased its first aircraft car-rier from the Ukraine prior to Hu’s Historic Missions speech, it is not difficult to see how the carrier could support the PLA’s requirement to defend China’s dis-puted maritime territorial claims and maritime eco-nomic interests. As a Xinhua article asserted shortly after the carrier was commissioned in September, “the legitimacy and necessity of developing the aircraft carrier technology to safeguard [China’s] national in-terests in the ocean is self-evident” [sic].72 Possession
of an aircraft carrier would, among other benefits, provide the PLA the ability to better reach the more farflung of China’s maritime territorial claims.
IMPROVING THE PLA’S CAPABILITIES