ABSTRACT
Throughout the decade of the 1990s, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been undergoing an impressive reform and modernization program that continues today. It is clear that the PLA intends to become a much more operationally capable force as well as a more professional force in the Huntingtonian sense of the term. Most of the scholarship focusing on Chinese military modernization tends to center on the accrual and fielding of new weapons and battlefield capabilities. However, a significant aspect of PLA reform and modernization revolves equally around institutional reform. The institutional aspects of reform remain relatively neglected at best or ignored at worst. However, the institutional reforms the PLA is currently undergoing contain tremendous potential to have an equally great impact on the future capabilities of this massive defense establishment, as do the weapons and platforms it is buying or developing.
