IN January 2007, the Chinese military launched a medium-range ballistic missile that destroyed an orbiting Chinese weather satellite. The event marked the first successful Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) test in history. Yet, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remained silent on the launch for almost two weeks, prompting outsiders to speculate that the Chinese civilian leadership did not know about the tests and that the military had acted independently in the missile launch.¹ 

The ASAT incident raised larger questions about the relationship between China’s civilian leadership and its military: Was the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) an independent actor, outside the realm of control of the CCP? What were the mechanisms of civilian oversight? Did the PLA aim to play a dominant role in Chinese national security? Would an assertive, even rogue military undermine China’s ‘peaceful rise’?

The test also raised questions regarding the precise nature/style of control exerted by the CCP over the PLA. Samuel P. Huntington, a key theorist of civil-military relations, proposed that governments exert either ‘subjective’ or ‘objective’ control over their militaries. With ‘subjective control’, party and army are closely intertwined and the armed forces are heavily involved in politics. Political leaders rely on ideology, indoctrination, and close personal ties to maximize civilian control. In a model of subjective control, the army acts as a non-professional, political actor similar to its civilian counterparts. In contrast, ‘objective control’ encourages a professional army that is largely autonomous from civilian institutions. The military remains non-ideological and restricted to the professional domain; civil-military relations are stable as the army focuses exclusively on military affairs. Was the ASAT test the result of subjective or objective civilian control, or did it signal a failure of control altogether?

In order to understand the dynamics between the CCP and PLA and how they might adhere to or depart from the influential Huntingtonian model, it is best to examine the recent history of party-army relations in China. This essay suggests that the relationship between army and party has shifted as the military has become more professional. As the PLA modernized, it became more autonomous, prompting the government to use new tools such as budget, rule of law, and state power to enforce control over the PLA. The army remains loyal to the party, although it has emerged as a professional organization largely separate from politics. In short, the CCP has shifted from subjective towards objective control as the PLA has professionalized.

Party-army relations remained relatively static in the first forty years of the PRC. Under Mao Zedong, the CCP exerted subjective control over the PLA. The party and army were closely intertwined: many high-ranking military leaders held top party positions in the Central Committee and Politburo, and senior party officials commanded top posts in the military. CCP officials also staffed commissars, party committee and discipline organizations within the military to subjectively control and monitor the PLA. The fusion between PLA and CCP created a ‘party-army’ rather than a ‘civil-military’ relationship, a phrase that would suggest distinct ‘civil’ and ‘military’ organizations.

 

As a result of this overlap, the PLA and CCP were mutually dependent on one another and heavily involved in each other’s affairs. The army became an armed extension of the party, loyal to the CCP but also a robust political actor. Senior military officers such as Xiong Guangkai, Wu Xiuquan, Xu Xin and Li Kenong crafted state policy and emerged as key power brokers between competing civilian groups in the CCP.² The PLA engaged in political campaigns and propaganda work to reinforce CCP legitimacy among the people. Political officials similarly interceded in military affairs, leveraging close personal ties to shape military policy. Political authority depended largely on personal ties to PLA leaders, and vice versa. As a highly politicized actor deeply embedded in civilian affairs, the military operated under subjective civilian control. It shared the norms and values of the competing civilian elites, rather than the norms of a professional military organization.

The symbiosis between the party and army was evident in the late 1960s when the party relied on the army to enforce the Cultural Revolution. Although Mao implemented a crackdown/purge on military leaders, he relied on the PLA to suppress internal dissent, restore public order, and control political affairs. Military personnel became a critical element of the revolutionary apparatus. By 1968, every province and autonomous region in China was governed by a Revolutionary Committee – a tripartite alliance of the PLA, the CCP, and the people. These Revolutionary Committees were dominated almost entirely by the PLA, thereby ensuring that the army remained heavily involved in politics. Those staffing the Revolutionary Committees were often also members of the Party Committees, encouraging additional PLA political engagement. Revolutionary Committees were controlled by the CCP, subordinating the PLA to serve as an armed, effective instrument of internal security and CCP control. As local military became synonymous with local government, party and army acted in concert to execute the political will of an increasingly fractured CCP.

 

This dynamic began to change in 1979. CCP leader Deng Xiaoping launched a series of military reforms that would fundamentally change the character of the PLA and its relations with the CCP. Deng sought to modernize the military, in part to satisfy China’s growing security needs as it embarked on a rapid economic development programme. The internal political environment was also favourable to military reform, as the remaining revolutionary elders largely endorsed a revamped military. But external factors also encouraged military modernization: China’s poor performance in its 1979 war with Vietnam forced the CCP to acknowledge the flaws in its doctrine and force structure. Outdated equipment and tactics originating from the Long March and Second World War, inadequate communications, deficient logistics and an archaic command structure ensured that China failed in achieving its strategic objectives in full measure. These shortcomings persuaded the PLA to revise its doctrinal thinking in favour of a more efficient, modern military machine.

 

Ultimately, Deng’s reforms would transform the PLA from a political to a highly professional organization. They would shift civilian oversight from subjective towards objective control, allowing the PLA to become a professional, autonomous military organization, distinct from the political realm. The reforms were extensive: doctrine, education and training was revamped to create a modern, professional military imbued with technical skills and specialized expertise. Political study, that once consumed nearly a third of a soldier’s training time, was abandoned in favour of specialized training for modern warfare. Laws, regulations and ranks were introduced. New regulations on promotions helped ensure that the incoming cadre of officers was appointed on the basis of merit, rather than political machinations. These wide-ranging rules encouraged the rise of a new, more professional Chinese military, as CCP leaders were less able to leverage personal ties to establish subjective control.

Deng’s military reforms also carved out a more autonomous identity for the PLA. As soldiers focused on specialized training and skills, they began to think of themselves as part of a professional rather than political force. Extensive training forged strong bonds among the officer corps. New uniforms and decorations helped cement perceptions that the military was a professional actor detached from the civilian and political realm. As the PLA became more modern and confident, a shift from ‘party-army’ to ‘civil-military’ slowly began to emerge.

 

The reforms also encouraged the Chinese military to retreat from politics. Choosing to focus on military modernization, the PLA became increasingly withdrawn. Throughout the 1980s, military personnel retired from key political organizations such as the Central Committee and Politburo, longtime bastions of military power in the CCP. In 1985 alone, six of nine military officers resigned from the Politburo. At the regional and district level, military commanders retired from provincial party committees, abdicating their political responsibilities to focus instead on army-building. Close ties between party and army personnel began to dissolve. As officers shifted their loyalties from politics to the army, the shift from subjective to objective civilian control was set in motion.

While the army became less political as a whole, the senior military elite remained heavily engaged in the politics of the 1980s. Informal ties allowed senior PLA officers to engineer policy from behind the scenes, despite their retirement from key party posts. Subjective control persisted in the upper echelons of the PLA as personal ties and political involvement continued. Thus while the ‘party-army’ dynamic remained at the top levels of the PLA, at the local level, the military began to disengage.

Although the 1980s witnessed a PLA withdrawal from politics, this did not mean there were no tensions between military and government. A major source of friction was the rise of ‘PLA Inc’. In 1982, the army quickly expanded its commercial enterprises to finance modernization. As the number of PLA-run businesses increased to 10,000 and increased in value by a factor of seven, the Chinese military became increasingly corrupt and ubiquitous in civil society. This caused significant tension at the local level, especially as PLA corporate activity peaked in the early 1990s. Civilian elites opposed the unfair business advantages granted to PLA enterprises, while the PLA grew increasingly disgruntled with an increase in thefts from PLA facilities. Relations between the party and the military deteriorated as the civilian leadership aggressively pursued military corruption cases, further tainting the PLA’s image. As the PLA carved out its separate corporate identity with distinct economic interests, it encouraged a more antagonistic civil-military relationship at the local level.

 

The two years following the Tiananmen Square protests marked the return of subjective CCP control over the PLA. The PLA did remain loyal to the party, directly intervening in the crisis to stifle internal dissent. Yet the CCP believed it had lost key mechanisms of subjective control over the army, as political indoctrination, commissar penetration into the PLA, and personal ties had been relinquished in favour of military modernization.

Realizing that its power and legitimacy rested largely on its control over the military, the CCP immediately shored up subjective control over the PLA: technical training sessions were replaced with long indoctrination sessions, and a vast propaganda campaign urging army loyalty to the state was implemented. The CCP also expanded the role of political commissars and party committees within the PLA to ensure better monitoring and oversight of the military. Hoping to maximize influence through heavy oversight of the military domain, the CCP forced the PLA to submit once again to subjective control.

 

Yet the return of a politicized army was short-lived. As tensions subsided and the CCP became more assured of its authority, these measures were relaxed. The military’s evolution towards a professional, autonomous, and apolitical actor resumed. This shift was encouraged by the events of the Gulf War in 1991 and former Yugoslavia in 1999: the US military’s successful, targeted and hi-tech air campaigns forced China to recognize that its notion of a ‘people’s war’ was outdated. Having witnessed the successes of the US military’s revolution in military affairs (RMA) – which involved electronic warfare, highly technical joint force attacks and the extensive use of air power – the CCP realized it had to streamline and modernize its forces. It could not afford to field a political but outdated army.

By the 1990s, Deng’s military reforms had fully taken root: technical specialization and a modern military doctrine, education, equipment, training regime and force structure had fashioned the PLA into a professional army. A newly professional PLA affected civil-military relations in three respects: first, professionalization solidified ‘civil-military’ rather than ‘party-army’ relations. As the army modernized, it reinforced the PLA view of itself as an autonomous military organization, rather than an armed adjunct of the party. This set the foundation for objective control by the CCP.

The CCP adopted new instruments of control over the army as the PLA became more independent. The decision to disband ‘PLA, Inc.’ was one such attempt to gain leverage and assert control over the military. Starting in 1993, the party enacted laws to increase supervision of and limit the PLA’s economic activity. In 1998, Jiang Zemin ordered the wholesale divestiture of the military from large-scale commercial enterprises. The military budget was placed under state control.

By passing the power of the purse to the state, the CCP gained institutional control over the PLA. The move also forced increased loyalty from the army as it became dependent on the state for funds, rendering the PLA subordinate to the party. The latter carefully managed this shift in civil-military relations. Rather than exploit its newfound control over the PLA, the CCP calibrated the military budget to satisfy the PLA elite. Divestiture signalled a civil-military bargain: the military would focus on professionalization in exchange for sufficient financial support from the CCP. While divestiture did initially spark some civil-military tensions, relations have eased as the party has mainly honoured its end of the bargain.

 

The party has also made the PLA more accountable to the rule of law. The government passed thousands of new military laws and regulations, standardizing promotion, officer education, combat behaviour and roles and responsibilities of NCOs. These new laws and regulations have been introduced at an increasing rate throughout the military. By formally defining the civil-military relationship, the CCP has been able to exert broader control over the PLA to forge a more institutionalized, objective civil-military relationship.

Furthermore, the CCP has responded to increased PLA autonomy by making the military subordinate to the state, as opposed to the party itself. The passage of the National Defence Law (NDL) in 1997 set the trend by granting budget and oversight authority to the state, directly subordinating the PLA to state power. The 1998 National Defence White Paper further placed the PLA under the control of state organs such as the State Central Military Commission (CMC), NPC, and State Council.

Some have interpreted these laws as a sign of ‘creeping guojiahua’, or nationalization. Scholars such as Andrew Scobell suggest that starting in the 1990s, the party has been losing out against the state in a three-way party-army-state relationship. Yet others argue that these measures are simply another means of party control. David Shambaugh asserts, for instance, that as long as state and party are one and the same, the army will remain subordinate to the party. The fact that two regulatory instruments of the PLA – the State CMC and the Party CMC – are staffed by the same personnel attests to the congruence between party and state. State control over the military is another manifestation of increased party control over the PLA, rather than a fundamental departure from Chinese civil-military norms.

 

As the PLA became more professional and autonomous, it divorced itself further from politics. While senior PLA officers were still involved in policy-making in the 1980s, the 1990s third-generation withdrew from statecraft to focus on military modernization. The rise of a fourth-generation PLA in the 2000s has further advanced the split between party and army. As a generation of young, highly specialized, and technologically skilled military officers replaced the older generation, the PLA retreated to focus on military affairs. Relations shifted to objective control as personal ties – the mechanism to assert subjective control – disappeared.

The PLA’s waning influence in the CCP is evident in the current CCP leadership profile. As David Shambaugh observes, ‘Not a single party leader today possesses a single day of military experience.’³ Furthermore, only two generals per CCP committee term have served in the Politburo since 1992, and no generals serve in the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC).⁴ The decline from 39 to 23 generals in the Central Committee under Hu Jintao further illustrates a diminished military presence in key policy-making organizations, and the weakening of subjective control.

 

This separation between party and army has permeated from the elite down to the local level. There is little interaction between military and civilian leaders ‘beyond the ring roads’ at the village level. In contrast to the Maoist era, the PLA has also grown disconnected from civil society. The PLA conducts little grassroots political and propaganda work among civilians, and links between PLA and civilians have steadily loosened. As professional mores have eclipsed the political intrigues of the Mao and Deng eras, the army has become disconnected from both the civilian leadership and society.

The pattern of civil-military relations in the past forty years can be summarized as follows. As the military becomes more professional, it has both become more autonomous and distinct from the CCP, while increasingly withdrawn from the political arena. The CCP has responded to the PLA’s newfound professional identity by applying new legal, budgetary and nationalization mechanisms to enforce control. While there are tensions between party and army, these remain largely controlled and the PLA subordinate to the expanded authority of the CCP through mechanisms of objective control. The future of civil-military relations is less certain though. As CCP-PLA interactions have become increasingly opaque, there is a greater degree of uncertainty as to how civil-military relations will evolve.

 

Four possible scenarios could be played out. First, disagreements over the PLA’s budget could stoke civil-military tensions. If the CCP shifts significant resources away from the PLA, it could antagonize it. Furthermore, as the PLA becomes more disconnected in CCP policy-making, it is less empowered to steer the budget in favour of defence spending. Nevertheless, many scholars suggest that budget tensions will at most be an irritant rather than a disaster for Chinese civil-military relations: the CCP is cognizant of the risks of reducing the PLA budget, and is likely to continue to accommodate the PLA’s financial needs. The PLA appears largely content with the state budget thus far and has only rarely expressed discontent on this issue in the past decade.

Second, the growing bifurcation between civilian and military elites could lead to a dangerous civil-military gap. As the PLA becomes more disengaged from the CCP, it may clash with the party. An emerging nationalistic and assertive culture within the PLA further suggests that party and army thinking and values may well diverge. Given the absence of personal ties and crossover leaders between the PLA and CCP, fewer mechanisms are available to resolve civil-military tensions, and the party and army may grow increasingly at odds.

The test launch of the ASAT in 2008 seemed to suggest that the party and army had dangerously diverged, and that the CCP was losing control over a bellicose PLA. Yet closer examination reveals a more complex dynamic. In his analysis of the incident, Andrew Scobell has argued that the launch was in fact part of a ‘deliberate and calculated Chinese [CCP] deterrence effort’, a signalling mechanism targeted at an American audience to instill US caution towards engaging the PLA. While the PLA may have ‘roguish’ tendencies, it remains subordinate to the CCP.

The PLA’s response to the SARS crisis, for instance, further suggests that the military fully honours the civilian leadership. While the PLA initially attempted to cover up the first SARS cases, which occurred in military hospitals, it ultimately submitted to civilian directives. The PLA offered only passive resistance to civilian efforts to expose and respond to the syndrome, and adopted a subordinate role in dealing with the crisis. As SARS demonstrated, while the military may occasionally resist some civilian policies, it by and large supports the CCP leadership. Active opposition to CCP directives is lacking.

 

A third scenario is that the PLA will disengage entirely from politics at all levels. Many experts believe that as the PLA becomes more professional, it will focus exclusively on military affairs and abdicate all political activity. The CCP may then rely solely on mechanisms of objective control to modulate military behaviour. The PLA’s declining political role is reflected by its near total withdrawal from the Politburo. Yet this scenario is also uncertain: it may be that increased professionalization will actually encourage the PLA to become more involved in politics that it deems within its sphere of influence.

For example, the PLA has grown increasingly vocal in crafting national security policy: the PLA Central Military Committee – chaired by President Hu Jintao but staffed by military personnel – now exerts near total control over defence policy. Military personnel have increased the amount and quality of military analysis, policy recommendations, and intelligence provided to the national security policy-makers, allowing the PLA to better shape national strategic objectives and policy. The PLA’s expanded participation in national security suggests that it may abandon political disengagement in favour of focused and active policy-making.⁵ 

 

Another possibility is that institutionalization will preserve the PLA-CCP status quo. As the CCP continues to enact regulations and laws that subordinate the PLA to state control, it will maintain the same degree of control over the military. Civil-military relations will become more formalized but remain essentially the same, as the army focuses on professionalism and disengages from politics.

Regardless of the exact contours of Chinese civil-military relations, what is likely is the Chinese military’s gradual evolution from political to professional actor, and a subsequent CCP shift from subjective to objective control. While the shift to professionalization and objective control is not yet complete, it is likely to define CCP-PLA relations in the near future. And in so doing it may well shape China’s newfound role on the international stage.

 

Footnotes:

1. For a more detailed analysis of the ASAT test, see Andrew Scobell, ‘Is There a Gap in China’s Peaceful Rise?’Parameters, 2009, and James Mulvenon, ‘Rogue Warriors? A Puzzled Look at the Chinese ASAT Test’, China Leadership Monitor 20, Hoover Institution, Winter 2007.

2. Song Zhongwei, ‘The Structural Influence of the Military in China’s Foreign Policy-Making’, Asian Studies Review 24(1), March 2000.

3. David Shambaugh, ‘Civil-Military Relations in China: Party-Army or National Military?’ Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, No. 16, 2002, p.12.

4. Joseph Lin, ‘The Changing Face of Chinese Military Generals: Evolving Promotion Practices Between 1981 and 2009’, Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 22 (1), March 2010, pp. 75-93.

5. For a more thorough discussion, see Michael Swaine, The Role of the Chinese Military in National Security Policymaking, Rand Corporation, 1998.