ABSTRACT
From its inception in 1927 as the “Red Army of Workers and Peasants,” the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has prided itself in being both a people’s army and a party-army. The early Red Army went to great lengths to differentiate its actions from the practices of the armies of the Nationalist Party and the warlords by issuing and enforcing the “Three Main Rules of Discipline” and “Eight Points of Attention.”1 At the same time, there was no doubt the army was the tool and protector of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The party-army relationship is perhaps best illustrated by Mao Zedong’s dictum, “Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.”2 For the majority of its history, there has been little conflict for the PLA between the requirements to “serve the people” and being a party-army. In fact, there is no conflict between these two obligations if one accepts the premise, as do all good Chinese communists, that the party serves the people and by obediently serving party needs, the PLA also serves the people, the country, and the government.
