ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the record of People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy war fighting in a broad political and historical context and examines the PLA Navy role in Chinese defense strategy, military politics, and command structure. It discusses the conduct and characteristics of each instance of PLA Navy combat action in greater detail, with an eye to identifying the lessons learned from each action and how they affected the evolution of Chinese naval capability. In the Chinese Civil War the highly motivated PLA crushed the demoralized Nationalist Army during its campaigns of 1948 and 1949. However, the victorious Communist army, which had specialized in guerrilla warfare in the countryside, confronted an unprecedented challenge when its soldiers reached the southeastern coast of China. The PLA did not have a navy, and the Taiwan Strait served as a natural barrier preventing any PLA invasion of Taiwan that could quickly conclude the Civil War by defeating the remnant Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek.
