After Deng Xiaoping’s assumption of power in 1978, the path to today’s PLA was set when national defense was included as the fourth of China’s four “modernizations” (the others being industry, science and technology, and agriculture). National defense was accorded the lowest priority, which carried implications for military funding and development.
In 1989, PLA units intervened with lethal force on behalf of the CCP to suppress political demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, which considerably damaged the PLA’s domestic and international image. World events in 1991 further shook CCP leaders’ confidence in the PLA. As a result, in the early 1990s Beijing altered its military doctrine, concluding that the most likely conflict that China would face would be a “local war under high-technology conditions” (later amended to “conditions of informatization,” referring to warfare in the digital age). Instead, the PLA began to emphasize a more offensive version of the PLA’s historical strategic concept of “active defense”: take advantage of longer range, precision-guided munitions (primarily ballistic and cruise missiles) to keep a potential enemy as far as possible from the economically fast-developing Chinese coastal areas by fighting a “noncontact,” short, sharp conflict like the Persian Gulf War. The accidental NATO strike against China’s Embassy in Serbia in 1999 led Beijing to focus on building capabilities to counter U.S. forces in addition to capabilities to dissuade Taiwan from any political activity Beijing deemed unacceptable.
To accelerate the PLA’s modernization and address capability shortfalls, Beijing increased the PLA’s budget by an average of 10 percent per year from 2000 to 2016. Beijing also established a PLA General Armaments Department in 1998 to rationalize equipment modernization and acquisition processes, and instituted several broad scientific and technical programs to improve the defense-industrial base and decrease the PLA’s dependence on foreign weapon acquisitions. The PLA also revamped its training programs, with all services attempting to prepare more realistically for conflict by emphasizing mission-focused exercises, multiservice operations, mobility, better C2 and staff work, and enhanced logistic support, as well as achieving battlefield advantage by applying “informatized” warfare (regional conflicts defined by real-time, data-networked C2) methods.
Subsequent PLA activities, such as counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden since 2009, international training and exercises, noncombatant evacuations in Libya and Yemen, and expanded peacekeeping operations in Africa under UN auspices, have all been part of China’s increasingly ambitious vision for expanding PLA activities to support its growing global clout. China’s establishment of its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017—overturning Beijing’s insistence from its first defense white paper issued in 1998 that China “does not station troops or set up military bases in any foreign country”—is only the latest development in this progression.
In late 2015, President Xi Jinping unveiled the most substantial PLA reforms in at least 30 years. The reforms were designed in part to make the PLA a leaner, more lethal force capable of conducting the types of joint operations that it believes it must master to compete with the U.S. military. Initial reforms established joint theater commands and a new Joint Staff Department while reorganizing the 4 general departments that previously ran the PLA into 15 Central Military Commission (CMC) departments and offices. These efforts aimed to clarify command authorities, integrate China’s military services for joint operations, and facilitate Beijing’s transition from peace to war.
The structural reforms also established a separate Army headquarters, elevated China’s missile force to a full service by establishing the PLA Rocket Force, unified China’s space and cyber capabilities under the Strategic Support Force, and created a Joint Logistics Support Force to direct precision support to PLA operations. The decision to place the Army, which has traditionally played a dominant role in PLA leadership, on equal footing with the PLA’s other services underscores a postreform emphasis on jointness. Overall reforms, which the CMC aims to complete by 2020, are expected to touch all levels of the PLA, including cutting approximately 300,000 personnel and refining military doctrine and policies.
In his work report to the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, Xi Jinping called on the PLA to “prepare for military struggle in all strategic directions,” and said the military was integral to achieving China’s national rejuvenation. In his speech, Xi set three developmental benchmarks for the PLA, including becoming a mechanized force with increased informatized and strategic capabilities by 2020, a fully modernized force by 2035, and a worldwide first-class military by midcentury.6 The latter two goals build on the call in China’s 2013 defense white paper, also issued under Xi, for China’s armed forces to achieve a status “commensurate with China’s international standing.” Viewed in sum, Xi’s vision for the PLA constitutes a logical outgrowth of CCP instructions to the PLA since 2004 to protect China’s expanding “development interests” at home and abroad.