ABSTRACT
The militia is a production and paramilitary force organized around occupational enterprises; it is a part-time volunteer service with its members working at their regular production and service jobs, although a few “militia cadres” at commune level do spend full time administering the local units. Paradoxically, the People’s Liberation Army has been ordered to intensify militia work even while Peking was striving to effect strict Party control over militia organizations. In 1961, the Ministry of National Defense ordered that each militia battalion was to have one basic or “backbone” company, but it is debatable whether or not that goal has yet been achieved. The number of production-construction corps increased dramatically during and after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The future role of the militia is one of the many imponderables of post-Mao China, but at present, the radical viewpoint seems to have lost much ground.
