ABSTRACT
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) plays a dual role in the People’s Republic of China (PRC/ China): (a) it is the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was instrumental in helping the CCP win the Civil War in the 1940s and establishing the oneparty system; and (b) it is a national army devoted to safeguarding China’s security and territorial integrity. The CCP’s political and ideological control of the military and its framing of the parameters of CCP-PLA interaction reflect the PLA’s role as the CCP’s military arm (Shambaugh 2003). At the same time, however, the PLA continuously searches for a suitable model for military modernization and combat engagement. One could argue that, as the national military, it demonstrated its professionalism – rather than guerrilla fighters’ credentials – as early as the early 1950s, when it successfully fought the Americans during the Korean War (PLA Academy of Military Science 1997). Throughout the 1950s it followed the Soviet model of military modernization, the influence of which peaked in the mid-1950s before its complete breakdown in the late 1950s (You 2009). Since the beginning of the reform era in the late 1970s, the PLA has begun placing increasing emphasis on its professionalism and military modernization, rather than on the revolutionary agenda set by the CCP.
