Since its founding in 1927, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has undergone continuous technological, doctrinal, and manpower transformation. Guided by Xi Jinping’s 2027 modernisation goals, the PLA is adapting to evolving warfare trends based on both its own combat experience and observation of other conflicts. For India, the implications arise not only from the PLA’s modernisation but also from emerging military and geopolitical dynamics.
Ever since the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) came into being on August 1, 1927, it has been going through technology absorption, and changes in doctrine and manpower. It has been watching the wars other countries were fighting and adapted itself to fight modern wars. These changes, combined with the two centenary goals and the goal for 2027 put forward by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2020, form the basis of the PLA’s modernisation. The present-day modernisation of the PLA goes back to the Jiang Zemin era. In 1997, he laid out a three-step strategy.[i] More recently, in the 2006 Defence White paper, China reiterated the same three-stage timeline for PLA’s modernisation as 2010, 2020, and mid-21st century.[ii] (The timeline changed later to 2020, 2035, and mid-21st Century.[iii]) In between, in 2014, an All-Army Political Work Conference was held in Gutian in which Xi spoke on the importance of the PLA implicitly obeying the Communist Party of China (CPC).[iv] This chapter will analyse the modernisation of the PLA, where it stands today, and what the implications are for India.
The PLA has been adapting itself to the changes taking place in warfare, either from the wars that it fought, or from the wars it observed others, particularly the U.S., fighting elsewhere. From the time the PLA was established, it did not change the doctrine of “People’s War” till the early 1980s. As Mao Zedong put it, “People’s War” is “The revolutionary war (that) is a war of the masses; only mobilising the masses and relying on them can wage it.”[v] Its experiences in the Korean War (1951-53) and the India-China War (1962) did not alter the war fighting doctrine of the PLA, as China considered those wars as a victory for itself, and, as a result, the PLA was largely inward-looking during this period.
“People’s War under Modern Conditions” was the doctrine adopted in 1977 in the post-Mao era. It was based on positional defence, as opposed to the positional defence and mobile offence of the earlier doctrine. The China–Vietnam War and a long Central Military Commission (CMC) Meeting convened in 1985 resulted in the doctrine being changed to “Local Wars under Modern Conditions”. The PLA very closely observed the Gulf War of 1991 and how the U.S. orchestrated that war from home. The PLA realised it was short on capabilities to fight such a war, and in 1993 changed its doctrine to “Local Wars under Modern High-Tech Conditions”. It was also around this time that the PLA thought about a War Zone Campaign (WZC). It saw the U.S. orchestrating the Second Gulf War in 2003, wherein Information Technology played a major role. In 2004, it brought out the doctrine of “Local Wars under Informatised Conditions”.[vi]
It is noteworthy that the doctrines from 1985 onwards mention “Local Wars”. That is because in the 1985 extended CMC meeting, then leader Deng Xiaoping decided that the wars of the future will not be world wars but limited in geography. The 2019 Defence White Paper refers to “intelligentised” warfare being on the horizon – the difference between informatised and intelligentised warfare is the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and methods.[vii] Thus, it can be seen that the PLA has been nimble in adapting to the changing character of warfare. Whether it has been able to adopt and implement the changes needed in its warfighting is another question – one that this chapter will discuss.
When it was raised in 1927, the PLA was a Peasants’ Army which used guerrilla warfare and the People’s War concept to defeat the Guomindang forces. Thereafter, it took part in the Korean War, where it had mixed results. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the support from the then Soviet Union in the form of weapons and equipment that helped the PLA modernise. However, the falling out between the USSR and China in the late 1950s resulted in all the Soviet engineers and technicians leaving China en masse, suddenly in 1960. In the 1970s, the focus was on reducing the PLA’s involvement in government.[viii] The real modernisation of the PLA started taking effect after the “four modernisations programme” conceived by Zhou Enlai in 1975 and promulgated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978.
The game changer came after the fall of the USSR and the first Gulf War. After the efforts of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping was handed the mandate of taking the PLA on the path to becoming a world-class military, as declared in the work report presented by Hu Jintao to the 18th Party Congress.[ix] Xi, to his credit, took on that mandate and pushed hard on reforming the PLA. Towards contributing to that effort, he created a CMC Leading Small Group for National Security and Military Reform (of which he is the chairman).[x] At its first meeting, he said military reforms should be undertaken in an “active yet prudent” manner. The first meeting of the Leading Small Group to finalise the reforms was held in March 2014, the second on July 14 the same year, and the proposals were put forth in the CMC Executive on July 22, 2015.[xi] The Politburo Standing Committee discussed the reforms on September 3, 2015, followed by the CMC Military Reform Work Conference in November 2015.
For the full chapter, you can buy the book here.
Lt Gen S L Narasimhan is the Adjunct Distinguished Fellow for China and National Security Studies at Gateway House.
This chapter was first published in ‘Indian Perspectives on China’s Politics, Economy, and Foreign Relations’ by The Hindu.
References:
[i] Gearin, D. (2019, February 05). PLA Force Reductions: Impact on the Services. Retrieved from National Defence University Press: https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/1748385/pla-force-reductions-impact-on-the-services/
[ii] Ministry of National Defence, P. R. (2006, December 29). Retrieved from china.org: http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/book/194421.htm
[iii] Brian Hart, B. S. (2021, March 26). China’s 2027 Goal Marks the PLA’s Centennial, Not an Expedited Military Modernization. Retrieved from Jamestown.org: https://jamestown.org/program/chinas-2027-goal-marks-the-plas-centennial-not-an-expedited-military-modernization/
[iv] Finkelstein, D. M. (2019, February 04). Breaking the Paradigm: Drivers Behind the PLA’s Current Period of Reform. Retrieved from National Defence University Press: https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/1747362/breaking-the-paradigm-drivers-behind-the-plas-current-period-of-reform/
[v] Zedong, M. (n.d.). Questions from Mao Tse Tung. Retrieved from www.marxists.org: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch08.htm
[vi] Edmund J Burke, K. G. (n.d.). Peoples Liberation army Operational Concepts. Rand Corporation. Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA300/RRA394-1/RAND_RRA394-1.pdf
[vii] Masafumi. (2022). PLA’s Perception about the Impact of AI on Military Affairs. NIDS Japan. Retrieved from https://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/publication/security/pdf/2022/01/04.pdf
[viii] Zissis, C. (2006, December 05). Modernizing the People’s Liberation Army of China. Retrieved from Council on Foreign Relations: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/modernizing-peoples-liberation-army-china
[ix] Jintao, H. (2012). Full Text of Hu Jintao’s Report at 18th Party Congress. Retrieved from http://np.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/Diplomacy/201211/t20121118_1586373.htm
[x] Keck, Z. (2014, March 21). China Creates New Military Reform Leading Group. The Diplomat. Retrieved from https://thediplomat.com/2014/03/china-creates-new-military-reform-leading-group/
[xi] Lim, J. (2022). Explaining military reforms under Xi Jinping: military effectiveness, power consolidation, and party-military relations in China. Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies, 264-281. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24761028.2022.2158564#abstract