ABSTRACT
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) progress from political dominance in the early 1960s to military intervention in 1967-1968 resulted from pressure by "Maoists" to expand the military role, and from the crisis in the civilian sector which required the PLA to intervene to maintain order. Among PLA main force officers, the disinction between miltiary and civilian was much more clear, and they overwhelmingly attempted to minimize their involvement in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) and to maintain their purely military status. The chapter explores professionalizing trend in the PLA since the civil war and the resistance of the officer corps to involvement in the GPCR and to radical "Maoism," the rapid "return to barracks" after the fall of Lin Piao, and the behavior of the PLA in the events surrounding Mao's death and since. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
