China’s Military Reform: In Search of Centrality and Joint Capability

2016 ◽  
Vol 08 (03) ◽  
pp. 68-77
Author(s):  
Bojian LIU ◽  
Gang CHEN
Keyword(s):  
New Wave ◽  
Military Reform ◽  
Operational Capability ◽  
Weapon Systems ◽  
People’S Liberation Army ◽  
Military Control ◽  
The Military ◽  
Party State ◽  
Party Congress ◽  
The Way

In a new wave of reform, China’s Central Military Commission remains a party-state organ of the highest military control. Politically, the reorganisation enhances intra-People’s Liberation Army (PLA) supervision and inter-section checks, and paves the way for the personnel reshuffle before the 19th Party Congress scheduled in 2017. Strategically, the military reshuffle is to advance the PLA’s joint operational capability, facilitate modernisation of weapon systems, accelerate China’s transition towards maritime power and improve the PLA’s systemic commanding efficiency.

Myanmar on the Way to Democracy

2012 ◽  
pp. 71-79
Author(s):  
A. Simoniya
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
The Political ◽  
Crucial Step ◽  
Aung San Suu Kyi ◽  
Leading Position ◽  
Military Control ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Way

The power in Myanmar (former Burma) was under military control since 1962. Now, at last, things begin to change. One can see something looking more like democracy. The 2010 elections, however, resulted in nothing more than some modification of the facade. The military has reasserted its leading position, the generals are pulling the strings just like before. Nevertheless, the authorities made a bold and crucial step: a meeting was arranged between the State rulers and the political detainee number 1 Aung San Suu Kyi, the uncontested opposition leader. A limited amnesty of political prisoners was also announced. The point is that the military rulers are anxious to break out of the international isolation and to get rid of the crippling sanctions imposed on their country by the major world powers. The first steps on this long road appear rather successful.

scholarly journals Truth and reconciliation cinema: an ethico-political study of residential school imagery in contemporary Indigenous film

2021 ◽  
pp. 117718012110124
Author(s):  
Tyson Stewart
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
School System ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Unanswered Question ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Historical Archive ◽  
The Way

This article explores an important facet of the New Wave of Indigenous filmmaking in Canada: residential school system history and imagery, its place in the historical archive, and the way it is being retold and reclaimed in films like Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), Savage (2009), Sisters & Brothers (2015), Indian Horse (2017), and The Grizzlies (2018). While researching this topic, one unanswered question has left me feeling sometimes frustrated and often troubled: Is there a risk of producing pan-Indigenous readings, or worse, repeating the original propagandistic intentions of the original residential school photographs when they are used in new media?

The ‘disappeared’ in Argentina 1976–1980

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Coad
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Military Coup ◽  
Daily Newspaper ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Robert Cox ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Disappeared ◽  
The Way

We publish below a list of writers and journalists abducted by the security forces and numbered among the ‘disappeared’ in Argentina since 24 March 1976, the date of the military coup that installed General Jorge Rafael Videla in power. Two eye-witness accounts illustrate the way in which such abductions usually take place. Finally, Robert Cox, editor-in-exile of the daily newspaper Buenos Aires Herald, describes how independent-minded journalists and the families of los desaparecidos ( ‘the disappeared’) have been affected. The material is introduced by Index on Censorship's researcher on Latin America, Malcolm Coad.

Organizational Changes of the PLA, 1985–1997

1999 ◽  
Vol 158 ◽  
pp. 314-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Li
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Chinese Leader ◽  
Organizational Changes ◽  
Military Reform ◽  
Force Structure ◽  
Asian Security ◽  
Learning Institutions ◽  
The Military ◽  
Shed Light

At the 15th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress held in September 1997, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin announced that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) would reduce its manpower by 500,000 in the next three years. This is apparently a new step to deepen the military reform that Deng Xiaoping had initiated in early 1980s. Such reform aims to transform the PLA from a manpower-based military geared toward fighting a major defensive “people's war” to a technology-based military capable of forward deployment to deal with more variegated local contingencies. While substantial research has been done on major aspects of this reform, changes within major PLA organizations, such as the Central Military Commission (CMC), the higher command structure, the research and learning institutions, and the force structure, have not been adequately and systematically analysed. This study intends to shed light on these changes. Such a study is necessary and significant also because it helps towards an understanding of the extent, direction and problems of China's defence modernization drive, which may have important implications for Asian security. Finally, it provides an analytical framework for research regarding further organizational changes of the PLA.

The history of a “primary source”: The making of Tûghî's chronicle on the regicide of Osman II

2009 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Baki Tezcan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Political Sophistication ◽  
History Of ◽  
Initial Attitude ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Way

AbstractA short chronicle by a former janissary called Tûghî on the regicide of the Ottoman Sultan Osman II in 1622 had a definitive impact on seventeenth-century Ottoman historiography in terms of the way in which this regicide was recounted. This study examines the formation of Tûghî's chronicle and shows how within the course of the year following the regicide, Tûghî's initial attitude, which recognized the collective responsibility of the military caste (kul) in the murder of Osman, evolved into a claim of their innocence. The chronicle of Tûghî is extant in successive editions of his own. A careful examination of these editions makes it possible to follow the evolution of Tûghî's narrative on the regicide in response to the historical developments in its immediate aftermath and thus witness both the evolution of a “primary source” and the gradual political sophistication of a janissary.

The Law of Martial Rule

1928 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-616
Author(s):  
Charles Fairman
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
General Belief ◽  
Military Tribunal ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Way

It is not in the least unusual, in newspaper accounts of a strike, riot, flood, or fire, to read that the governor has proclaimed martial law and summoned the militia to the threatened zone. However exaggerated such reports may be, they are evidence of a general belief that there exists some mysterious “martial law” which, when proclaimed, augments the powers of soldiers and paves the way for heroic measures. Nor are these notions wholly fanciful. For such a proclamation may indeed be followed by an extraordinary régime in which the military authority will issue regulations for the conduct of the civil population, troops may be called upon to take life, and perhaps the individuals accused of fomenting trouble will be held without authority of a court, or in some cases may even be tried by a military tribunal. Quite likely these severe measures will receive the approval of public opinion. Yet it is surprising that a people ordinarily rather legalistic should have evinced so little disposition to inquire what rules of law, if any, govern the exercise of these military powers. To answering that unasked query the present study is addressed.

scholarly journals Labels on the maps of the Third Military Survey of Austria-Hungary and on the survey maps of the Military Geographical Institute (Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny) in Warsaw in the light of survey manuals

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wojciech Włoskowicz
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Standard Map ◽  
The Third ◽  
Last Stage ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Military ◽  
Topographic Surveys ◽  
The Way

Abstract Materials from topographic surveys had a serious impact on the labels on the maps that were based on these surveys. Collecting toponyms and information that were to be placed as labels on a final map, was an additional duty the survey officers were tasked with. Regulations concerning labels were included in survey manuals issued by the Austro-Hungarian Militärgeographisches Institut in Vienna and the Polish Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny in Warsaw. The analyzed Austro-Hungarian regulations date from the years 1875, 1887, 1894, 1903 (2nd ed.). The oldest manual was issued during the Third Military Survey of Austria-Hungary (1:25,000) and regulated the way it was conducted (it is to be supposed that the issued manual was mainly a collection of regulations issued prior to the survey launch). The Third Survey was the basis for the 1:75,000 Spezialkarte map. The other manuals regulated the field revisions of the survey. The analyzed Polish manuals date from the years 1925, 1936, and 1937. The properties of the labels resulted from the military purpose of the maps. The geographical names’ function was to facilitate land navigation whereas other labels were meant to provide a military map user with information that could not be otherwise transmitted with standard map symbols. A concern for not overloading the maps with labels is to be observed in the manuals: a survey officer was supposed to conduct a preliminary generalization of geographical names. During a survey both an Austro-Hungarian and a Polish survey officer marked labels on a separate “label sheet”. The most important difference between the procedures in the two institutes was that in the last stage of work an Austro-Hungarian officer transferred the labels (that were to be placed on a printed map) from the “label sheet” to the hand-drawn survey map, which made a cartographer not responsible for placing them in the right places. In the case of the Polish institute the labels remained only on the “label sheets”.

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