People’s War in the Twenty-First Century: The Militia and the Reserves

In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the formation of the modern reserve forces in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), a July 2003 article in Zhongguo guofang bao (China national defense news) stated that the PLA’s reserve forces “were reorganized and revamped in 1998.”2 Changes in the missions and structure of PLA reserve units and the militia have been largely overlooked as foreign observers have examined other elements of Chinese military modernization.