ABSTRACT
The People's Liberation Army is unique among the world's major armed forces for the importance it has attached to political activity and ideological indoctrination. The first order of political business for the newly founded People's Republic of China (PRC) navy was to assure the loyalty of the many ex-Nationalist naval personnel who had crossed over and had become the technological backbone of the embryonic navy. The navy was faced in 1949 with the task of building a structure of modern naval expertise on the foundations of a relatively primitive infantry tradition. The remonstrations were for relatively minor infractions, but they represented the first criticism of the PRC Navy to appear in the public press. The Party and government had decided to back the navy's development program and were depending upon the navy in the Jinmen operation, as well as for coastal defense. The symbiotic relationship between the navy and the Party was thus forged by 1957.
