Political indoctrination in the Chinese military: Towards a post-revolutionary People’s Liberation Army

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
Juliette Genevaz
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
The Political ◽  
People's Liberation Army ◽  
Party Control ◽  
People’S Liberation Army ◽  
Chinese Military ◽  
Ideological Change ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

This article examines the role played by the political indoctrination of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during China’s socio-economic reforms of 1987–2007. This period was a time of political transition during which the Chinese Communist Party transformed its ideology from a focus on revolution to a self-proclaimed unrivalled single-party regime. This article looks at how the party conveyed this ideological change to the armed forces. One of the four PLA general headquarters/departments, the PLA General Political Department (中国人民解放军总政治部), was responsible for the indoctrination of servicemen and -women. Examining the work of this agency over the 20 years following its major ideological effort in 1987, this article challenges the dominant literature according to which political indoctrination hinders military professionalization. The crux of this argument is that the General Political Department’s purpose behind indoctrination of the armed forces was not only to assert party control but also to build esprit de corps. Based on a series of previously untapped periodicals published by the General Political Department, this analysis contributes to understanding processes of authoritarian resilience in the contemporary Chinese state.

The Nanchang Uprising

1962 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 161-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Guillermaz
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Accurate Assessment ◽  
People's Liberation Army ◽  
Red Army ◽  
People’S Liberation Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

August 1, 1927, is one of the big days in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It marked the opening of a military phase which was to last more than twenty years and was to leave a deep mark on the Party and the present régime both in their outlook and their structure. Symbolically, it is the birthday of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the Chinese Red Army, and it is as such that it is celebrated every year. It would perhaps be worthwhile after thirty-five years to make an accurate assessment of this event and first to place it in the political context of the time.

The Chinese Armed Forces and the Challenges of Globalization

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-70
Author(s):  
Andrea Ghiselli
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Territorial Defense ◽  
People's Liberation Army ◽  
The People ◽  
People’S Liberation Army ◽  
Civilian Leadership ◽  
Inter State

How did the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) react to the securitization act initiated by the civilian leadership? This chapter shows that the PLA was relatively hesitant to accept a more inclusive understanding of security beyond traditional territorial defense, and therefore of a broader role for itself in China’s peacetime foreign policy. The PLA’s approach to non-traditional missions was similar to that of other countries’ armed forces, as they did not look favorably on so-called interventionist uses of force. It was in the aftermath of the 2011 Libyan crisis that the position of the PLA changed in an unequivocal way and the soldiers’ attitude towards the expansion of their peacetime portfolio became very similar to that of the civilians. While the soldiers’ natural desire to contribute to the security of the people played an important role in this process, it is important to emphasize how crucial the establishment of a causal link between non-traditional security threats and inter-state conflict was in the debate within the PLA.

The Chinese Army after the Cultural Revolution: the Effects of Intervention

1973 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 450-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellis Joffe
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Power Structure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Short Term ◽  
People's Liberation Army ◽  
People’S Liberation Army ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Whatever may have been the objectives of the principal participants in the Cultural Revolution, there can be little doubt that they did not include what turned out to be, at least in the short term, the most striking and significant outcome of the upheaval: the rise of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to a pivotal position in China's power structure. Compelled to intervene in the political process when the disruptive effects of the struggle reached dangerous dimensions, the army gradually ascended to the commanding heights of political power in the provinces, and acquired a substantial voice in the policy-making councils of Peking. When the Ninth Congress of the Party finally met in April 1969 to write the epilogue to the Cultural Revolution, it was the PLA rather than the Party that held most of the key positions of power in China.

Assault on the Reforms: Conservative Criticism of Political and Economic Liberalization in China, 1985–86

1988 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 198-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence R. Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Economic Liberalization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Deng Xiaoping ◽  
The West ◽  
Scientific Freedom ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
General Secretary

Following Hu Yaobang's resignation as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party on 16 January 1987, the political and economic reforms sponsored by Deng Xiaoping since 1978 came under intense criticism. Warning against “bourgeois liberalization” and renewed “spiritual pollution” from the west, Party conservatives reacted to student demonstrations in December 1986 by reversing the “Double Hundred” policy of literary and scientific freedom and by engineering the purge of the ardent westernizers Fang Lizhi, Liu Binyan and Wang Ruowang. Deng Liqun's “Leading Group to Oppose Bourgeois Liberalism,” Chen Yun's Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC), and the outspoken Peng Zhen emerged as the main ideological watchdogs favouring restrictions on individual expression. But even the pro-reformer Zhao Ziyang condemned western ideas as “pernicious,” just as his chief secretary Bao Tong, warned intellectuals against “writ[ing] only about (the merits) of developed capitalist countries.”

Focus: China, tradition and modernity Introduction

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
DOUWE FOKKEMA
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Gender Construction ◽  
The Political ◽  
Women's Poetry ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Western Democracies

This Introduction was written in November 2002, when the 16th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was being held where more than 2000 delegates (representing 66 million Party members) decided on future policies and changes in the leadership. The way these decisions were prepared and endorsed reminds us how China differs from Western democracies. However, apart from the political structures, to what extent is China different?The following five essays, all written by Chinese scholars, allow us a glimpse into contemporary Chinese culture through informative reports on philosophy, cultural studies, fiction, gender construction and women's poetry, and traditional Chinese medicine. Of course, these articles are far from covering all aspects, or even all major aspects, of Chinese culture, yet they offer us views of specific areas by experts who, from their insiders' vantage points, lead us into the heart of the intellectual debate in contemporary China.Although the authors of these essays, with few exceptions, hesitate to generalize on present conditions and possible future scenarios, their arguments have something in common and suggest, perhaps unknowingly, important clues for understanding Chinese culture. When reading these essays, I am struck by the following, recurrent aspects.

Changing Concepts of Doctrine, Strategy and Operations in the Chinese People's Liberation Army 1978–87

1987 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 572-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul H. B. Godwin
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Military Doctrine ◽  
People's Liberation Army ◽  
Chinese Leadership ◽  
People’S Liberation Army ◽  
Nuclear Warfare

Introduction Since the late 1970s, when the current programmes seeking to modernize China's defence establishment began, issues of military doctrine, strategy and operations have remained at the forefront of China's quest for a defence capacity capable of being ranked among the world's great powers. As the Chinese leadership contemplated defence modernization, they could not but recognize the Janus-like quality of their armed forces. One face looked back on the people's war traditions that served them so well and for so long, while the other faced the complexities of conventional and strategic nuclear warfare and deterrence in the latter part of the 20th century.

Mainsprings of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy

1950 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Arthur Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Communist China ◽  
Political Realities

With the proclamation on October 1, 1949, of the establishment of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese Communism formally passed into its constitutional phase. Prior to that date, the Chinese Communist Party had been the only political organization exercising authority throughout all of the territories held by Communist armed forces; thereafter, to all external appearances, it became but one of several political parties and groups participating in the coalition government of the “people’s democratic dictatorship.” Nevertheless, the new constitutional fagade does not alter the political realities in Communist China.

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