This
very dry book is a study of the development of Communist China’s military
strategy, covering about 70 years of modern Chinese history in which there were
three major shifts in Chinese strategy. The book may not be written as a summer
beach-read page-turner, but it is incredibly clear in showing the reader the
facts of Chinese military guidelines.
Fravel
starts with some background on how the Communists (CCP) came to power. In the
first phase, in the late 1920s, the CCP tried to create urban uprisings and
take power in cities, but it didn’t work. Then, in the second phase, the CCP
established rural bases to develop the Red Army. The third phase, they started
to seize cities in 1930. However, the Nationalists responded strongly and
encircled the Communists by 1934 using what the author calls an “offensive net,”
and the CCP began the Long March to the west, where they would regroup despite dropping
in strength from one hundred thousand to just ten thousand soldiers after
travelling over three thousand miles. It was during the Long March that the CCP
held meetings to examine the reasons for its defeat, and it was during this
time when Mao, who had no hand in the loss, gained power and control over the party.
The Communists regrouped during the Sino-Japanese War, avoiding direct contact
with Japanese forces, letting the Nationalists and the Japanese fight each
other. In the fifth phase, from 1945 to 1949, the Communists returned to fighting
the Nationalists and triumphed.
After
1949 and safely in power, the senior military officers of the Communist Party
developed their strategic guidelines, which served as loose plans for
warfighting. Each strategic guideline has four components. The first is the “identification
of the strategic opponent and the operational target, based on the specific
military threat posed by the opponent.” Second is the primary strategic
direction, referring to “the geographic focal point for a potential conflict.”
The third component is the “basis of preparations for military struggle,”
essentially the “how” of the plan. Fourth is the “basic guiding thought,” which
is a principle or set of principles to guide the plan. These guidelines had
changed much during the civil war but less so once in power.
Active defense, which serves as the
title of the book, is the guiding principle of Chinese military strategy. It
assumes a superior enemy, putting China on the defensive. It is about
overcoming weakness, not how to go on the strategic offensive or how to engage
a weaker opponent. It is basically about counterattacking- minimizing damage
from the first enemy attack and responding powerfully enough to deter further
attacks. It is about self-defense for the Chinese from Russia and the United
States. The Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) defines active defense as “using proactive
offensive actions to defend against the attacking enemy.”
The other two important concepts to
know are “luring the enemy in deep” and “people’s war.” Luring the enemy in
deep was one of Mao’s favorite military ideas. It is what it sounds like,
bringing the enemy within and destroying them though attrition brought on by guerrilla
warfare. The use of this strategy ended by the late 1930s. People’s war is all
about mobilizing the entire nation to use ever person against the enemy. It reminds
me of a more defensive version of American “total war” in World War II.
The 1956 strategy was called “the
strategic guideline for defending the motherland” and was based on the coastal
defense of China’s mainland during the first 6 months of a US invasion. It was
the result of high party unity after victory in the civil war and the need to
adapt to the type of war that senior military leaders foresaw. Now that China needed
to defend its own territory, the strategy changed from maneuver warfare to
positional warfare, trying to “do everything we can to hold key areas, islands,
and important cities along the coast.” The CCP had fought maneuver warfare
during the civil war, holding little territory permanently, but now in charge
of the country, they needed to shift to defend the homeland.
In 1964, under the heavy influence
of Mao, the party returned to the strategy of “luring the enemy in deep.” It is
a strange case where a country returned to an older strategic guideline, and
unlike all the other changes since 1949, this change to the strategic guideline
was initiated not by a senior military officer but by Mao himself. This
strategy was also anomalous in the way that it was drafted- not codified and
discussed and approved by senior officers as was typically done, but rather
based on remarks Mao had made throughout the year. Mao had wanted to use
military policy for domestic goals, specifically “developing the third line,”
which was the “massive industrialization of China’s southwestern hinterland
that would consume over half of domestic investment in the Third Five-Year
Plan.” A move this big was going to be controversial, so Mao used the military
necessity as an excuse, so the strategic guideline was really made for domestic
political reasons, not as the best defense for China. This was probably not a
very good way to run the military, and it was just the beginning of Mao’s Cultural
Revolution that would start in 1966 and last until his death in 1976. Due to
factionalism in Chinese leadership, this plan would remain China’s strategy
until 1980, when Deng Xiaoping consolidated power. The author, due to the fact
that this policy is so anomalous, does not consider it a “major change.”
In 1980, the Central Military
Committee of the CCP adopted a new plan to defend against possible Soviet
invasion called “active defense.” In contrast to luring the enemy in deep, the
1980 plan called for using forward defense to stop a breakthrough. The name of
the game was positional warfare. There was also a shift in Chinese naval
strategy from “near-coast defense” to “near-ocean defense,” signaling that
China meant to expand its naval presence from its own coast to waters adjacent
to China. We know that today they go even further, using the nine-dash line
policy to take over the South China Sea.
In 1993
came the final major change to Chinese defensive strategy. For the first time,
it was based not in how to defend Chinese territory from an invasion, but on
how to win limited wars with new ways of fighting. It was inspired by the Gulf
War and the revolutions in warfare that occurred then as well as the
unification of the party, which took a while to happen after the Tiananmen
Square demonstrations. The primary goal of the new guideline was to prevent
Taiwan from officially gaining independence from China, though I would
personally think that this is a more diplomatic goal since Taiwan is de facto
independent and has recognition from many countries in some way or another. In
2004 and 2014, the CCP revised the guideline to put more focus on the “informatization”
of warfare, meaning “the application of technology to all aspects of military
operations” (sensors, electronics, automated command and control systems, and
information operations over the internet and other media to affect public
opinion) and “integrated joint operations,” meaning “unified operations under a
single command-and-control network” rathe than different services coordinating
together. Integrated joint operations are more centralized.
The final
chapter focuses on Chinese nuclear strategy, which has not really changed since
China developed the bomb in 1965. The Chinese have always focused on missile
warheads rather than bombs dropped from planes to use nuclear weapons as a
strategic defense and deterrence. They created the Second Artillery as an
independent branch to manage nuclear weapons. The number of nukes China has is
small, but big enough to inflict serious damage on an enemy in an emergency as
a retaliation, as China has a no-first strike policy.
To conclude,
this is a really great book for learning about Chinese military strategy. It is
very clear, and I found myself using a lot of quotes in my reflection, as the
writer says things as they are and doesn’t leave a lot of room for guessing.
This book does exactly what it sets out to do.
Miscellaneous Facts
- Shortly before the Tiananmen Square protests, Zhang Ziyang suggested separating the army from the party, which must have been very controversial and did not happen.
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