The need for reform, as the NDU Press volume Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA underscores, stems from a painful history and strategic failures. Xi and his colleagues recognized that China’s historical “century of humiliation” was tied to military weakness. More recently, key operational events exposed the PLA’s critical shortcomings:
- The 1990–1991 Gulf War demonstrated the overwhelming technological superiority of the U.S. military’s joint warfare capabilities.
- The 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis exposed the PLA’s inability to effectively deter or counter U.S. intervention on Taiwan’s behalf.
These lessons crystallized the understanding that the old PLA structure—dominated by the ground forces and plagued by bureaucratic inertia and corruption—was fundamentally incapable of winning a modern, high-tech war. Xi’s political genius was in leveraging his anti-corruption campaign to dismantle the power structures that had resisted change for decades, enabling him to push through the most sweeping reorganization in PLA history.
The Structural Revolution: From Land Forces to Jointness
The core of the reform is a fundamental shift from a land-centric force provider to a truly joint command structure. The goal is to maximize efficiency and coordination across all services in an informationized conflict environment.
- Abolishing the Old Guard: The seven traditional, ground-force-dominated Military Regions were disbanded.
- Establishing Joint Theater Commands: In their place, five geographically aligned Theater Commands (TCs) were established. These TCs are now the primary war-fighting units, responsible for integrating and commanding forces from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force within their theater.
- New Strategic Services: Two critical quasi-services were created to support joint operations:
- The Strategic Support Force (SSF): A key element for modern warfare, responsible for the PLA’s capabilities in space, cyber, and electronic warfare.
- The Joint Logistics Support Force (JLSF): Established to provide unified, efficient logistics across the new joint theaters.
This structural overhaul effectively reduced the influence of the once-dominant PLA Army (PLAA), transforming the service-level headquarters into “force providers” focused on training, equipping, and modernizing their respective organizations, while the new Theater Commands became the “force users” focused on combat operations.
The Party’s Iron Grip: Centralizing Authority
Perhaps the most politically significant aspect of the reforms is the unprecedented consolidation of power under Xi Jinping and the Central Military Commission (CMC).
Xi dismantled the four powerful General Departments (Staff, Political, Logistics, and Armaments), which had often functioned as “independent kingdoms” with immense bureaucratic authority. By transferring many of their functions to smaller offices reporting directly to the CMC, Xi reinforced the foundational CCP principle: the Party’s absolute leadership over the military.
This move served two purposes: political loyalty and operational readiness. It purged corrupt or politically disloyal officers while ensuring that the newly established joint command system would be responsive to direct, streamlined political direction from the very top, eliminating bottlenecks and bureaucratic resistance during a crisis.
The Dispatch: Implications for Global Security
The conclusion drawn by the experts in Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA is that while challenges remain, the reforms are succeeding in their core political objective: creating a more effective, loyal, and capable military.
- A More Confident Adversary: Rival territorial claimants (like Japan, India, and the Philippines) now face a more integrated and capable adversary across the region, particularly in the South and East China seas.
- The Taiwan Calculus: The reformed PLA is better positioned to conduct complex joint operations, making its ability to deter or intimidate potential adversaries, particularly over Taiwan, more credible.
- Technological Fusion: The push for Civil-Military Integration (CMI) aims to accelerate the adoption of advanced, often commercial, technologies into the PLA, rapidly advancing its modernization beyond traditional state-led defense industrial efforts.
The strategic tension is clear: by leveraging a firm political hand to enforce structural and ideological change, Xi Jinping is rapidly transforming the PLA from a defensive, ground-heavy force into an integrated, offensive-capable military designed to project power and secure China’s strategic interests on the global stage. This is a crucial dispatch for any strategic planner or observer of international relations.
Leave a comment