A Fresh Look at the Chinese Revolution

: I am pleased to introduce The Chinese People s Liberation Army of 2025 which is the 2014 edition of an ongoing series on the People s Liberation Army (PLA) co-published by the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), and the United States Pacific Command (USPACOM). This volume builds on previous volumes and identifies potential trajectories for PLA force modernization and mission focus, and how these potential changes could impact external actors. This volume is of special relevance today in light of the profound changes occurring within the PLA. I have spent a considerable amount of my professional career in the Western Pacific and, during that time, I have witnessed first-hand the rapid expansion of the size and capability of the PLA as it pursues a longterm, comprehensive military modernization program. China s desire to develop a military commensurate with its diverse interests is both legitimate and understandable. The challenge for USPACOM, and the reason why this volume is timely and important, is to understand how China will employ this growing military capability in support of its interests. The scholarship presented in this edition addresses the uncertainty surrounding the potential direction of the PLA by examining three distinct focus areas: Domestic, External, and Technological Drivers of PLA Modernization; Alternative Futures for the PLA; and, Implications for the Region, World, and U.S.-China Relations. The analysis provides an insightful perspective into the factors shaping and propelling the PLA s modernization, its potential future orientation ranging from internally focused to globally focused, and how the PLA s choices may impact China s relations with its neighbors and the world. NBR and SSI have, once again, provided an outstanding contribution to the growing body of research and analysis on the PLA.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The son of peasants, Professor Zhou Yiqing was born in 1929. He joined the Eighth Route Army (later part of the People's Liberation Army) at the age of 16. During the Sino-Japanese War and the War of Liberation (Chinese Civil War) he served as a nurse, head of a nursing squad, assistant physician and eventually doctor-in-charge. In 1960, he graduated from the Shanghai No. 2 Military Medical University and later became a researcher at the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology (IME) of the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS). In April this year, Zhou Yiqing and his team won the 2009 European Inventors of the Year award (in the non-European countries category) for developing the first artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) for known as Coartem. He talks to reporter Cui Weiyuan about this achievement. Q: Did malaria ever affect people in China? A: Malaria was an epidemic disease in China for more than 3000 years. The symptoms were described in ancient writings. For example, Nei Jing (the Canon of Internal Medicine) described them as early as 270 BC. When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, malaria was endemic in two-thirds of Chinese counties, but it has not been a major public health problem since the 1980s. Q: What was your first experience of malaria? A: In the battle to cross the Yangtze River in 1949, I contracted the disease for the first time and suffered recurring bouts. No effective medicine was available. The pain left a sharp impression on me. I received an arsenic injection and, later, Atabrine (quinacrine) pills. The pills made me turn bright yellow. Although the side-effects were serious, I survived. Some female comrades suffered psychosis from drug toxicity after being treated. Q: Is that what spurred you to do research to find antimalarial drugs? A: While I worked as a battlefield doctor, one thing bothered me most: wounded soldiers begging me to save their lives because sometimes I just could not help them. I had only four years' primary school education. I vowed to improve myself. In 1960, I graduated from medical school and was assigned to become a researcher at the Chinese AMMS but was first sent to the Soviet Union for further study. Contracting malaria made me realize how bad the disease can be. However, my official participation in the research project stemmed from the Viet Nam War. When I returned from the Soviet Union in 1964, the war had broken out. I was ordered to conduct field research on tropical diseases in Viet Nam. China was supporting North Viet Nam and providing it with medical aid. Following orders, my comrades and I travelled along the Beibu (Tonkin) Gulf and through the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the jungle--it was the only way to maintain supplies for North Viet Nam because the United States of America had bombed it so intensely. We were accompanied by showers of bombs during the trip. There, I witnessed rampant malaria that reduced the combat strength by half, sometimes by up to 90% when the soldiers became ill. There was a saying, We're not afraid of American imperialists, but we are afraid of malaria, although in fact the disease took a huge toll on both sides. Later, we submitted a report to Chinas Central Military Committee, stressing the importance of developing Chinas own antimalarials. Taking our advice, the central government set up a panel of more than 500 medical military and civilian experts to develop new anti-malarial treatment for stricken soldiers. This was classified as a top secret state mission named Project 523, after the date, 23 May 1967, it was established. Q: What made you and your team think of using artemisinin to treat malaria? A: Project 523 included two groups engaged in antimalarial drug development: one to devise chemical medicines, another to examine traditional Chinese medicines. The latter group included researchers as well as traditional Chinese medicine doctors, who, as part of Chairman Mao's barefoot scheme, scoured the nation to collect folk remedies. …

CARRY THE REVOLUTION THROUGH TO THE END

: In an address given at the U.S. Army War College, the author, Vice President of the Academy of Military Science of the People's Republic of China, set the foundation for a future relationship between the two professional military education institutions. In support of China's policies of 'reform and opening up,' the People's Liberation Army is actively seeking military-to-military relations with other nations, particularly with the United States. Aware of this historic juncture, the author delivered his address in the spirit of increased Sino-American dialogue and cooperation. The speech is interesting for what it tells us not only about Chinese strategy, but how the Chinese government views threats to its national security.

Taiwan entered the international spotlight in 1996. No longer seen as just an economic powerhouse and diplomatic dilemma, the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROCOT) caught international attention in two new dimensions: politics and security. In March the ROCOT's first ever direct presidential election took place against the backdrop of unprecedented military coercion from the People's Republic of China (PRC). The world watched nervously as Taiwan's presidential candidates campaigned while Chinese missiles landed near the island's two major ports and air and naval forces of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) held live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait.

This paper investigates diverse public opinion on the rise of the People's Republic of China through a survey conducted in the tri‐state region of Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. In the midst of a global financial crisis, China's financial support to the US economy, as well as its recent modernization of the People's Liberation Army, echoed a serious public anxiety over a potential military and economic security threat to the United States. Will the rise of China create a military as well as an economic security threat to the United States? Is there anticipation that the continuing rapid economic growth in China will overtake the US economy within three decades? Will its successful economic growth lead China to democratization? Introducing scholarly debates on these research questions, the research in this paper examines important empirical research results on the issue.

This article shows that in the armed forces of the People's Republic of China, the general training of military personnel includes various types of sports games and exercises for general development, as well as elements of various types of martial arts. Hand-to-hand combat plays a special role in the system of combat, physical and psychological training of the military personnel of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Reforming the PLA of the People’s Republic of China is accompanied by painstaking and hard work, which sometimes reaches the point of fanaticism, physical and mental hardening of military personnel. And precisely, hand-to-hand combat, is considered by the command of the PLA as one of the effective approaches to such hardening. The provisions of the tactics of modern combined arms warfire, a part of which is the tactics of close combat and direct hand-to-hand combat as its component, is the starting point for determining the general and special tasks of hand-to-hand training. In addition, it is the final point for checking the effectiveness of the functioning of this system through the performance of a wide range of combat tasks in the conditions of various field exercises. At the end of each academic year, the General Staff of the PLA of China conducts a random inspection of personnel according to the ‘General Regulations’. Physical standards in the the PLA are developed in accordance with the ‘Military Training Manual of the the PLA’ and are intended to standardize the physical training of military personnel, increase the physical skills and combat capacity of personnel.

Reviewed by: China's Future Nuclear Submarine Force L. H. Xavier Demián Soto Zuppa (bio) Andrew S. Erickson, Lyle J. Goldstein, William S. Murray and Andrew R. Wilson, editors. China's Future Nuclear Submarine Force. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007. xvi, 413 pp. Hardcover $45.00, isbn 978-1-59114-326-0. China's Future Nuclear Submarine Force is a compilation of the papers presented at the 2005 conference on China's new nuclear submarine force at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. The authors are academics who, in many cases, have served as officials on U.S. nuclear submarines (SSN) around the world. This volume is one of many efforts to assess the consequences that the impressively high and constant Chinese economic growth has shown in the last decades. The most evident results have been the People's Republic of China (PRC) increasing demand for oil and natural gas and its need to ensure its maritime trade to sustain its growing industry. These elements represent many maritime-oriented challenges that the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is striving to overcome by creating a capable submarine-centered navy that would be able to defend its regional interests, as a first phase, and to develop a power projection capacity in a later phase. The modernization of the PLAN has caused great anxiety among China's neighbors and in the United States about what role the U.S. Navy should play in East Asia. These elements are analyzed and contextualized by the participants of this very specific volume that focuses on the small proportion of Chinese SSNs. It also contains data about the submarine force and the navy as a whole. Furthermore, the book offers a wide range of perspectives that provide readers with the opportunity to make their own judgments based on a meticulous analysis of data from Chinese sources. There is a broad agreement among the participants regarding the Chinese Navy focus on the accelerated development of submarines and that the SSN 093 extends the strategic reach of the Chinese Navy. A consensus was also reached by the participants that further development of the SSN force could represent China's intentions to project broadly into global waters. A consolidation of the conventional/diesel submarine (SS) force would indicate a naval force oriented to a Taiwan crisis scenario or operations in the East Asian littoral. Disagreements emerge in the volume, largely because of the scarcity of reliable information about the PLAN modernization progress, based on speculations about the possible roles of the type 094 nuclear-powered ballistic submarine (SSBN), or the possible strategies that the PRC could follow in the near future. The book expounds first upon Chinese submarine development and then the dimensions of the new submarine capabilities. It continues with a discussion of current and future SSN operations. Finally, it offers an assessment of Cold War [End Page 494] lessons in order to understand the development of the PRC nuclear submarine force and the implications for the U.S. national security. The first section is initiated by Eric McVadon's work: an assessment of the current developments in the Chinese Army and its synergies with other new Chinese military capabilities. McVadon believes that China does not want to compromise its brilliant economic and international influence by provoking a crisis with Taiwan or a confrontation with the United States. Thus, a moderated and cautious posture currently prevails. Nevertheless, by enhancing its naval and missile forces to the point that in the case the Taiwan state of affairs goes awry, the PLAN could be available to contest Taiwan and U.S. forces. This causes some concern, not just in Washington and Taipei but in Tokyo as well. The PLAN has matured remarkably in its acquisition of platforms, equipment, and weapons. However, it still needs experience in exercising its forces and developing command and control capabilities, coordinating means and intelligence, and targeting support to make that force operational. It also needs a better-educated officer corps than it now has. If China reaches these objectives, in a strait crisis it could easily subdue Taiwan and delay U.S. intervention. Other factors also have to be...

ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS during the last year, VicePremier Teng Hsiao-p'ing, who by the end of 1975 was effectively exercising administrative control over the People's Republic of China (PRC), warned his interlocutors of the danger posed by the Soviet Union. He who hears the wind in the bell tower, he said, citing a Chinese proverb, should take precautions against the coming storm. Although the contradiction was posed in various ways during the course of the year-hegemonism as against the freedom of second and third world powers to act independently, capitulationism as against continued resistance to revisionism and social-imperialism, strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat domestically as against acceding to an essentially revisionist concept of bourgeois right, or any number of other related conflicts-it seemed clear that the principal contradiction from the Chinese viewpoint, to borrow Maoist analytical language, was that between China and the Soviet Union. Other contradictions, domestic and international alike, were either subordinated or reduced to this fundamental one by Chinese analysts and policy-makers. In a number of ways it seemed on the surface an anomalous year. The principal mass movement of the previous year, that against Confucius and Lin Piao, was transformed in the early months of 1975 into the paradox of a mobilizational campaign that extolled normalcy. The year began with the ratification by the long-heralded Fourth National People's Congress of a new state constitution which introduced the endorsement of the right to strike, while almost immediately thereafter the People's Liberation Army, (PLA) was used to quell what, by all accounts, surely seemed to be a workers' strike. The dictatorship of the proletariat, ideological articles insisted, must be strengthened and applied most assiduously to the working class itself, among whom a new and, in many ways, an especially insidious source of embourgeoisement was seen to be manifesting itself.

The People's Republic of China’s desire to retake Taiwan stems from its concerns over territorial integrity, the Chinese Communist Party’s regime survival, as well as Beijing’s perception of the geostrategic importance of Taiwan. Nevertheless, Taiwan’s survival as a contested state since 1971 has constrained its ability to strengthen its military capabilities. Taiwan’s traditional security challenges have deepened over time primarily because of the slanting military balance across the Taiwan Strait following the People's Liberation Army’s (PLA) ambitious modernization. The PLA has obtained ground, air and naval superiority over its Taiwanese counterpart and improved its C4ISR, information warfare, and A2/AD capabilities. The uncertain semi-alliance relationship with the U.S.A. and pitfalls in Taiwan’s defense reforms have complicated these deepening security threats from across the Strait. The grueling national security tests Taiwan faces today are onerous.

As the Deng era approaches its end, concern abroad, particularly in East Asia, focuses on how the People's Republic of China (PRC) will cope with territorial disputes with Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and India, and the continued quest for Taiwan. Meanwhile Chinese military modernization steadily increases the People's Liberation Army (PLA) air and sea power projection. The question arises: might a beleaguered post-Deng leadership seek to strengthen its legitimacy through exploitation of Chinese nationalism and if so, how would this manifest itself in foreign relations?

Perhaps no other foreign policy area brought forth the emotional anti communism characteristic of the 1950s as did American relations with the People's Republic of China. The so–called “ loss of China ”issue beginning in 1949, for which the Republicans primarily blamed the Democrats, severely strained the bipartisan approach towards foreign policy. In addition, four years before he died in 1951, Republican foreign policy leader Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg excluded China policy from the area of bipartisan agreement, while his party's loyalty to the defeated Nationalists remained strong. Senator Joseph McCarthy's“communists–in– government” charges during the Korean War, when American forces were engaged in combat with the People's Liberation Army, further exacerbated relations between the Republican and Democratic parties, and between the legislative and executive branches of government. Ominously, the possibility of a preventive strike on the China mainland also became the focus of serious consideration and possible implementation during the Formosa Strait confrontation of 1954–55.

The end of the Cold War has led the five nuclear powers to reconsider their nuclear strategies against a changed security environment. Although none of them has slowed down their modernization efforts, nuclear arsenals in the United States, Russia, Britain and France have been scaled down. In contrast, China has stepped up its nuclear weapons programs. This may enlarge its current weapons stock. More importantly, with technological upgrading, the Strategic Missile Force of the People's Liberation Army seems to have moved one step closer to real battle preparation [ 1 ]. In People's Liberation Army terminology this means the Strategic Missile Force units have set up full protocols to launch missiles at designated targets, immediately after they receive orders from the Central Military Commission of the Party. This sharpening of the nuclear sword is reflected by the efforts of the Strategic Missile Force to transform itself from a “hiding force” into a “fighting force.” In order to achieve better readiness for action, it has revised its nuclear combat guidelines, redeployed its combat units, and quickened research and development for new missiles. This article is an attempt to analyze the new development of the Chinese nuclear force in the post‐Cold War era.

: The People's Republic of China (PRC) has twice initiated high-intensity war to accomplish limited political objectives, maintaining proportionality by keeping the wars short and the political objectives paramount. China invaded India in 1962 and, after a month of uninterrupted military success, withdrew its forces and established unchallenged control of a border region that had been under PRC control at the beginning of the war. When China invaded Vietnam across a 450-mile front in 1979, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) performed poorly but achieved several political objectives. These PRC-initiated border wars reflect a different conception of limited war than the United States usually associates with that term. The wars more nearly reflect the relationship between military means and political ends found in the dynastic wars of 18th Century Europe, when a short intense war might be conducted to establish advantage in the next negotiations. Observations about the conduct and character of these wars are important to understanding the PRC approach to war, and might be relevant to future crises between the PRC and Taiwan.

Benjamin Samokovlija (Sarajevo, 31.III.1918 - Skopje, 28.II.1996), comes from a Jewish family. On April 5, 1941 he was mobilized in the ranks of the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the second half of August 1941, Benjamin joined the ranks of the National Liberation Army and the People's Liberation Army. He took part in numerous battles in the anti-fascist war for the liberation of Yugoslavia. After the Fourth Enemy Offensive of the Supreme Headquarters of the People's Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia which took place in the first half of 1943, Samokovlija together with part of his partisan unit were captured by the Germans and imprisoned in Zenica. After a month in the Zenica prison, a group of 600 prisoners, including Samokovlija, were transferred to the Thessaloniki concentration camp. In October 1943, through an EAM connection, Benjamin Samokovlija managed to escape and join ELAS. He remained in the ranks of the Greek partisans until the contact with the Macedonian partisans from the First Macedonian-Kosovo Brigade on the territory of the Aegean part of Macedonia in the period between the second half of December 1943 and January 1944. He was admitted to the III Battalion and was in charge of the agitprop of the battalion, from where he was later transferred to the ranks of the II, V and X brigades, acting as a battalion commissioner and participating in the battles for the liberation of Macedonia. At the very beginning of World War II in 1941, Benjamin Samokovlija lost many of his immediate family members, including his parents and wife. As direct witnesses to the measures taken for the physical and economic destruction of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the German occupying authorities, their collaborators and the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia, his three sisters joined the People's Liberation War. His eldest sister Laura was killed in 1945. Benjamin Samokovlija is the holder of several military and state decorations. During his tenure, he ran a number of state-owned enterprises. It is particularly important to emphasize that for less than two decades he served as President of the Jewish community in the Republic of Macedonia, building strong friendly relations with other religious communities in the country.