Title: The PLA at Home and Abroad: Assessing the Operational Capabilities of China's Military
Abstract: PLA at Home and Abroad: Assessing the Operational Capabilities of China's Military edited by Roy Kamphausen, David Lai, and Andrew Scobell Carlisle, PA: US Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2010 645 pages $29.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] two decades, American political leaders of both major parties and senior military officers of services have complained that lacked transparency in its posture and policy on security. With due respect, but in candor, that lament borders on nonsense. A Westerner who wants to know what the Chinese are up to could begin with any one of many excellent histories to trace the strands that have culminated in the drive of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to rebuild the Middle Kingdom, a concept dating from the Eighth Century BC. Then the explorer could delve into books like James Lilley's Hands, in which the author recounts his time as US ambassador in Beijing during the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square and scholar Susan Shirk's China. Fragile Super Power, in which she convincingly links China's internal politics with its external ambitions. In particular, this excellent study entitled PLA at Home and Abroad, which fits into a flow of unclassified books, monographs, and papers on China's military posture from the Army's Strategic Studies Institute, does much to dispel any mystery that might surround the People's Liberation Army (PLA). For a long time, American leaders have been surprised with the PLA's advances, the introduction concludes. The emergence of a much more sophisticated PLA in the coming years should not be a surprise. This work was edited by Roy Kamphausen of the National Bureau of Asian Research who qualifies as a China hand; David Lai, a scholar at the Strategic Studies Institute who was raised in before becoming a naturalized US citizen; and Andrew Scobell, another scholar and a recognized China hand at the RAND Corporation. They were joined by eleven other specialists on and evidently benefitted from wide-ranging discussions on China's military power at a conference in late 2009. As China's economy surged in the early 1990s, then-President Jiang Zemin set three guidelines for the PLA: 1) to move beyond protecting the nation's borders to winning a local war against Taiwan, 2) to shift from a manpower-intensive force to one based on technology, and 3) to fight a limited war under high-tech conditions, possibly involving hegemonic powers, with those powers to be read as the US and its allies. Chinese apprehension about the strategic intent of the United States, wrote David Lai in the introduction, the driver for much of the PLA's modernization programs and doctrinal evolution encompassing realms of military operations from space to submarine warfare. In turn, he says, China's military modernization has deepened US apprehension about China's intent. Moreover, all of Asia is watching the dynamics of the Sino-American relationship. Beijing to assert that the PLA does not pose a threat to other Asian nations is viewed askance in other Asian capitals. …
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-09-22
Language: en
Type: article
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