"Looking to Dominate" .. Is the Chinese Army Preparing for a Global Deployment?

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Preparations are continuing in Tiananmen Square, China's largest square, in preparation for the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. The loudspeakers broadcast military music and marshes, while soldiers and students perform their final training in preparation for the show, while black luxury cars flock to the grand building of the House of Representatives, carrying the entire country's leaders and the Communist Party present, as usual on this occasion, except for one person who misses it. Everyone today, Defense Minister Lin Biao, who was deputy leader Mao Zedong, his declared successor, the country's second man.

A few days earlier, on September 12, 1971, 1 Trident aircraft took off from Baidahi Airport, about 240 km east of Beijing, crossing the border with Mongolia, before suddenly crashing into a total crash. Rescue, among the wreckage, on the remains of military suits, torn documents, charred weapons and bodies. Later, the death of Lin Biao, a number of his family and aides, was soon announced in a process that remains one of the biggest mysteries in the political liquidation world in history.

Things unfolded somewhat through information leaked over the following years. Lin Biao had just failed to implement a military coup plan to seize power and assassinate Mao following disagreements between the two men, following Mao's decision to rapprochement with the United States. Greater convergence with the Soviets. After the failure he made the decision to flee to Moscow, before his plane crashed under mysterious circumstances.

Since the founding of the Red Army in 1927, after the Nanchang Uprising (2) , the army's dependence on the Communist Party has been emphasized as a cornerstone of China's new rule. Over the following decades, the Red Army did not pose so much danger to the leaders of the party, owing to the strict ideological loyalty imposed within its ranks, and for so long played the role of the purge arm used by the party to get rid of its political rivals, to the extent that Mao used Lin Biao himself to get rid. From his successor Liuzhaoshi, who was president and his supporters, before Mao froze the post of president for four full years, Biao as his successor ascend one vice president of the Communist Party of China.

(3) Biao introduced major military reforms to arm and train the Chinese army, which paved his way to the ranks of the ruling party, before seeking to overthrow Mao. So Biao's experience inherited fears among party leaders that a more professional army would necessarily mean breaking the party's control, or trying to impose certain policies on its agenda. In the following months and years, Mao and his comrades launched a massive purge among the Chinese army, aimed at eliminating leaders and officers close to Biao, in order to regain control of the army.

At the time, Mao discovered that he was suffering from the increasing power of local military commanders, the potential for conflict between them or confronting central authorities, so he held a meeting with the new chief of staff, signaling Mao to replace all commanders and senior officers in the eight military zones. Mao has already responded to the advice by recruiting new leaders, and none has been allowed to recruit loyal staff except in service jobs such as secretarial, cooking and guarding.

The new tactics produced a good result. Over the following decades, there were no regional unrest or military rebellions, even as the country passed through turbulent periods such as the death of Mao in 1976, or even the Tiananmen incident in 1989. The Chinese leadership seemed to have undermined potential threats by The military establishment, through large-scale sporadic adjustments to the supreme military elite over the years, is what President Xi Jinping today finds compelled to do again, on a large scale, in a manner almost like Mao did, but for radically different reasons.

Goldwater Nichols: American-style reform

Nothing can tell the depth of the gap between China's and the West's view of the war from a light comparison of the writings of the most prominent war scene of both camps, despite a time gap between them spanning more than 2,000 years. For Karl von Klaswitz (1780-1831), a Prussian military expert, "there are many ways to achieve goals, but for political goals the only way is to fight, where everything is subject to the power of arms." Sun Tzu (551-496 BC), the most famous military theorist in China's history, argues that "fighting a hundred wars, even if all of them win, is not a wise decision, but the wisdom is always to break the resistance of the enemy without fighting." Not surprisingly, concepts such as "Shanzan", which means "wary of war," have for centuries dominated Chinese military thinking, and the country inherited a defensive look primarily in dealing with military matters.

Moreover, as a result of China's vast land area, China has paid so much attention to its land forces and largely neglected the naval power, to the point that Hegel called the sea for China merely an "end to land boundaries." Throughout most of its history, China's military strategy has been nothing more than variations on a fixed plan, the formation of a powerful and vast land army that would enable it to counter the invasion of a military superior force such as the Mongols, Han, or even the Soviet Union. As the agricultural economy dominated China, land conservation became more important, meaning that the Great Empire would continue to turn its back to the sea.

But this perception has changed over the last 20 years (5) , with Chinese economic activity and Beijing's economic interests expanding in Asia and Africa, the country's economic growth linked to energy security, and ensuring free shipping in sea lanes, especially the South and East China Sea, where China has baptized for the past two decades. To establish a strong naval arsenal, targeting a fleet of more than 340 ships by 2020, which includes two aircraft carriers (6) , and strengthen its missile defense capabilities, in addition to the development of its air force.

President Qi came to power in the midst of this surge of Chinese military armament. He soon realized that, despite the enormity of the Chinese army and its boom in armaments, it had become a stagnant organization where corruption was rampant. Challenges, and far behind the standards of modern warfare.

The Chinese army was still shaped by the Soviet style of the Second World War and seemed to be facing the same crisis the US military faced during the Cold War era, with the emergence of a new generation of war largely dependent on the ability to coordinate joint operations, a crisis Their highlight helps explain Che's position.

At the time, the US military found it extremely difficult to coordinate the military, namely, ground forces, naval and air forces when planning, conducting operations, or acquiring materiel, although the three main branches of the military, ground, naval and air forces, were merged under the authority of The Department of Defense since 1947, because of the continued intense rivalries between the various services that hindered the performance of the army, to the extent that the most famous commander of the US Air Force, General Curtis Limai, was quoted as saying "the Soviets are our adversary, our enemy is the Navy."

Worse still, strong service branches in the army have usurped much of the executive command of the field command. It was common for the commander-in-chief to find troops moved to or outside their areas of responsibility at the request of the service headquarters in Washington, sometimes even without the commander-in-chief's knowledge. For the region. This lack of command has contributed to the catastrophic failure of several military operations, led by Operation Eagle Claw, a 1980 attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran due to lack of effective coordination between the military and the navy.

This problem prompted Congress to draft legislation to reorganize the US military in the early 1980s, the so-called Goldwater Nichols Act, to reform the Army's operational chain of command. The law reduced the powers of services to focus on training and development, and strengthened the authority of the defense minister over all branches of the military, which quickly emerged as a distinct coordinated leadership performance during the Gulf War and beyond. Although we are not talking about the US military, the structural modernization that Che is leading today in the Communist Red Army is paradoxical, much like the modernization of the US military four decades ago, which, in the essence, is essentially a Soviet-style transition for armies focused on Ground forces, to a pattern closer to the way Western armies work more focused integration of units and improve the performance of joint operations.

Restructuring

The Problems of the Chinese Army (7) As noted by Che, it revolves around several things: the ineffective "multi-layered" command system resulting from the weak control of the CMC, the dual military leadership of both the government and the Communist Party responsible for overseeing the army, formed by 11 people and headed by Che himself, on the four divisions of the army: personnel, political affairs, logistics and weapons, where their role is limited to the development of general strategy, while operational operations suffer the consequences of long-term division (8) between combat forces "engaged with the enemy", and other operations "logistics and transportation and so on. till then".

The second, and perhaps most obvious, of these problems was control (9). The other units, namely the naval and air forces, were only called in times of war when they were fully under the control of the ground forces, which did not have a special headquarters but used the headquarters of the four divisions as de facto headquarters. Then there is the weakness of the Chinese army's ability to conduct joint operations that require the participation of naval or air units with the ground forces, because of the long-term military culture that marginalizes the role of these units, and finally this structural inflation in the ranks of the army, reaching 2.3 million people, mostly concentrated in Land units, while air, sea and missile weapons are understaffed and hence capabilities.

Based on this diagnosis, Che began in 2015 to implement his structural reform plan, a plan announced at the 18th meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee in 2013, which included several measures, beginning with the limitation of responsibility for the military exclusively as one of the competences of the Central Military Commission, which was mandated Instead of exercising their leadership role through the previous four departments, which were merged with 11 other agencies under the direct leadership of the Central Committee, these 15 bodies are now all at the same level of influence, at least in terms of a Theory.

Of these 15 agencies, three are the Disciplinary Inspection Committee, the Policy Committee, the Law and the Audit Management Office responsible for military oversight and anti-corruption activities, all joint party-military committees to ensure party control. The changes also included reducing the total dominance of the ground forces by establishing a special headquarters with naval and air forces, transforming the former army headquarters into joint operations centers under the supervision of the Central Military Commission and the Army Command. Although senior ground officers still control command positions in these agencies, leaders from other units are likely to be selected following the party's 19th congress in September this year.

Not only that, Che also upgraded the second artillery "rocket" squads, which were under the command of the ground forces, to an independent special service parallel to the three branches of the army, and assigned to the management of the country's expanding missile defense empire, including conventional and nuclear missiles. . The Strategic Support Force, which was upgraded directly to the level of a full service or weapon, was created on an equal footing with the four branches. The new unit is responsible for cyber warfare and space wars. Funding for these operations was increased by 30%, and, like the United States, the role of service weapons was reduced to only training and development.



At the level of the army's field distribution, the old division of the country into seven districts has been abandoned in favor of a new, more centralized division comprising only five "northern, southern, central, eastern and western" regions, with a plan to reduce the army to only two million by 2020. The Chinese military has undergone 11 consecutive downsizing since the 1980s, during which the military has been reduced three times: one million in 1985, 500,000 in 1997 and 200,000 in 2003. The new plan aims to demobilize 300,000 soldiers and officers With a tendency to abolish entire brigades of ground forces and reduce the numbers of many other brigades, 84 units of A. were restructured Reduce their cost and improve their ability to conduct joint operations. Qi also plans to change military recruitment trends, including accepting 24% fewer students in ground-force study programs in military schools, which has already occurred in 2016 compared to 2015. Students studying for aviation and missiles will increase. The number of students in space programs, radars and drones will grow by 16%.

Out of bounds

Though much of the credit for the military development plan lies with Che, we cannot separate these efforts from their recent historical context. The 2008 China Defense Draft, which sets out the tone of China's military orientations for the future, indicated Beijing's willingness to actively participate in what it defined as " Non-war military operations, "which include disaster response, search and rescue, anti-piracy operations, and medical operations. These were the cards of military “green diplomacy”, to which China attributed the effectiveness of the US global deployment, and China has already begun steps towards establishing a similar deployment. In 2007, the Chinese Navy launched a giant medical ship roaming, although China did not have any presence at the time Offshore.

This vision became clearer in the 2015 defense paper issued under Qi (13) , which stated that the ultimate goal was to transform the entire role of the military, reorient its branches and expand its role, including the protection of Chinese interests abroad. Resources, strategic maritime communications lines, and external assets. " This meant a radical shift from China's self-centered, non-interventionist paradigm to a policy in line with the global powers' policy of using its military influence abroad as an effective tool to assert its overall influence, especially with the increasing activities of terrorism and piracy that threaten China's expanding interests.

In December 2016, the Terrorism Act was first passed in China, allowing Beijing to participate in counter-terrorism operations abroad, with the approval of the State Council, the Council of Ministers and the Central Military Commission. Together with the above-mentioned structural adjustments, these regulations have served as the basis for a more interventionist Chinese military, more committed to the pattern of joint operations based on all branches, and engaged in cross-border activities rather than on security and internal defense issues.

Qi redesigned the Chinese army also in line with his massive plan known as the "Belt and Road", which requires adequate security arrangements to secure Chinese trade during known trouble spots such as Afghanistan and West Pakistan. Che's focus on acquiring aircraft carriers to secure the main sea routes under the belt and the road is also part of the plan, but enforcing a transformation of this magnitude cannot be deemed trivial. It threatens to upset China's neighbors and international comrades and risks turning its image as a "peaceful partner" for the countries involved in the conflicts.

Since Deng Xiaoping's reign in the late 1980s, China has been keen to reassure the world about the peacefulness of its economic ambitions and refrain from direct military intervention, despite its arms sales, but these taboos are steadily eroding, as China first participated in UN anti-piracy operations. Today it plays a more serious role in the seas of south and east China. These regional interventions, in turn, have provided an incentive for neighboring countries, such as Japan, to balance Beijing's activity, but the risks of the plan go far beyond that, to things within China itself, reminiscent of Mao's memories.

"Red Army": second purge

Lin Biao's experience reinforced inherited fears among Communist Party leaders that a modern, more efficient army would mean a greater chance of getting out of party control. So, as Che embarks on his extensive plans to modernize the army, he is keen to apply the same old Mao recipe to strengthen control: overthrow the army's current elite, and step up a new loyalist elite.

Since the beginning of the modernization plan, (15) Qi cleared at least 52 senior military commanders on corruption-related charges as part of a large-scale restructuring of regions, departments and services. But Che's biggest move was to remove Jo Bokseong and Xu Kaihu, two former vice-chairmans of the Central Military Commission.

Jo Buxiong and Xu Kaihu dominated the Chinese army for a decade, from 2002 to 2012, and promotions among senior army officers were subject to the approval of the two men. The two men severely undermined the authority of civilian leadership during the administrations of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. It started with a public television interview in March 2015, in which three former generals revealed that Xu Kaihu had requested 20 million yuan (about $ 3.25 million) for the sale of a military district commander. Bokseong was also accused of embezzling Chinese military fund allocations. . Che did not put the opportunity to overthrow the two men, or perhaps engineer them himself, and in conjunction with them, he made a massive movement, and replaced 57 people out of 91 senior commanders of units and weapons in the army since 2012, with massive changes close to two-thirds of the senior leadership.

Qi still faces the challenge of the ongoing protests of China's increasingly influential veterans' community, especially as the Qi plan guarantees the release of 300,000 new members to join this powerful society.

European

In addition, by presidential decree issued by the Political Bureau of the Party in June 2015, Che abolished all exceptions to the age-based retirement system for military officers, from the age of 30 for soldiers, 45 for cohort and 50 for team leaders, 65 years for unit and district leaders and 72 years for Central Committee members. The strict application has brought senior military personnel to retirement, including former Air Force political commissioner Tian Xiu Si, former naval political commissioner Liu Xiaojiang, former political commissioner of the Second Artillery Zhang Heyang and others.Not only did the decree emphasize enforcement of age limits, but it gave the military commission led by Qi the power to dismiss leaders who were unable to work, unqualified or inactive as a result of health issues or other reasons, opening the way for the Chinese president to remove a number of other leaders using a package. The reasons are diverse and flexible.

But if Che had succeeded so far in strengthening (16) grip and the grip of the party on the army, it is still facing the challenge of protests continued community veterans who enjoy growing influence in China, especially that Che plan to ensure the demobilization of 300 thousand new member to join this influential community , With the corresponding number of job opportunities, or equivalent pensions and services, which military veterans continue to complain about. However, the veterans, while capable of provoking disagreement, did not at any time present a "challenge" to the party's rule, especially as the Chinese regime had many ways to curb the protests, and with Qi proving he had no objection to arresting those leading the protests, whatever their identities. "With cool nerves."

It seems clear that Che wants to collect advantages from everything. As he moves to establish a Western-style army to protect his country's expanding interests and promote his grand belt-and-road plan, he also benefits from the Leninist-Soviet style of civil-military relations, one that keeps the military under control. Party and Qi's personal control (17) , a pattern that has proved effective in China even during major crises such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square crisis. But the specter of Mao's experience is unlikely to depart any time soon from the imagination of Qi, who proved that, while leading an effort Unprecedented to modernize China's army, tight control will always remain Its first goal.