ABSTRACT
The professionalization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) since the mid1980s replicates a parallel process of encouraging professionalism among other corporate groups that Beijing considers essential to the development of China’s national wealth and power. In all such groups, the encouragement of professionalism has created potential tensions between the ideals of each group’s professional ethos and the political purposes of the regime. From Beijing’s perspective, encouraging professional expertise in service to China’s progress, while blunting the potential challenges to its political authority motivated by professional idealism, has generated recurring dilemmas throughout the reform era.
