A History of the Modern Chinese Army

Xiaobing Li

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780813139364
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

Since the establishment of the Red Army in 1927, China's military has responded to profound changes in Chinese society, particularly its domestic politics, shifting economy, and evolving threat perceptions. Recently tensions between China and Taiwan and other east Asian nations have aroused great interest in the extraordinary transformation and new capabilities of the Chinese army. In A History of the Modern Chinese Army, Xiaobing Li, a former member of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), provides a comprehensive examination of the PLA from the Cold War to the beginning of the twenty-first century that highlights the military's central function in modern Chinese society. In the 1940s, the Chinese army was in its infancy, and many soldiers were rural conscripts and volunteers who had received little formal schooling. The Chinese military rapidly increased its mobility and weapon strength, and the Korean War and Cold War offered intense combat experience that not only allowed soldiers to hone their fighting techniques but also helped China to develop military tactics tailored to the surrounding countries whose armies posed the most immediate threats. Yet even in the 1970s, the completion of a middle school education (nine years) was considered above-average, and only 4 percent of the 224 top Chinese generals had any college credit hours. However, in 1995 the high command began to institute massive reforms to transform the PLA from a labor-intensive force into a technology-intensive army. Continually seeking more urban conscripts and emphasizing higher education, the PLA Reserve Officer Training and Selection program recruited students from across the nation. These reservists would become commissioned officers upon graduation, and they majored in atomic physics, computer science, and electrical engineering. Grounding the text in previously unreleased official Chinese government and military records as well as the personal testimonies of more than two hundred PLA soldiers, Li charts the development of China's armed forces against the backdrop of Chinese society, cultural traditions, political history, and recent technological advancements. A History of the Modern Chinese Army links China's military modernization to the country's growing international and economic power and provides a unique perspective on China's esttablishment and maintenance of one of the world's most advanced military forces.

1

Peasants and
Revolutions

CHINA IS ONE OF THE earliest civilizations in the world, with a recorded military history of five thousand years.¹ Because of China's unique geographic setting and demographic characteristics, its military tradition has emphasized mass mobilization of peasants, or farmer-soldiers, since the ancient age.² From the first unification of China in 221 B.C. to 1949, when the PRC was founded, roughly 85 percent of the Chinese population were farmers.³ By 1969, farmers still composed 84.2 percent of China's workforce.⁴ This chapter begins with an overview of the historical nature of peasants and examines why peasants served in the emperor's army and how they were organized into an effective force to protect ancient and imperial institutions.

The chapter traces the roots of peasant rebellions and radical revolutions in modern Chinese history as historical precursors of the Chinese Communist forces by elucidating the late Ming's uprisings (1641–44), the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64), and the Xinhai Revolution (1911). The 1911 republican revolution raises the question of why the revolution failed to gain the peasants’ support in the struggle to end what would be the last dynasty of the two-thousand-year-old imperial system. The stories of Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan, 1866–1925) and Jiang Jieshi, who founded the GMD and the National Revolutionary Army (NRA), show that the republican leaders depended on landowners and empowered them in the revolution, rather than the peasants, who would become the victims of the increasing warfare during the Warlord Period (1916–27) after the revolution.

This chapter follows the development of the Communist movement in China during the 1920s, including the establishment of the CCP in 1921 and the emergence of the most important Communist military leaders, such as Mao and Zhou—individuals who thought eclectically about social and military issues. As the first generation of Communist leaders, they had political and social concerns that were unprecedented among Chinese military leaders, inspired not only by a heightened awareness of ideas transmitted to China via Russia, France, and Japan but also by robust traditions dating back many centuries. Moreover, these leaders’ visions and insights grew out of their active participation in the political and economic campaigns of the period, often as organizers and thinkers. The Chinese Communist military began during the CCP-GMD political coalition against the warlords in 1924–27, and eventually, in 1949, the Communist forces took over the country.

The Peasant and the Emperor's Army

Before 1949, the Chinese peasant lived in the village where his family had lived for generations and cultivated the soil, growing rice, wheat, or other grains. As a male farmer, he enjoyed his small-scale farming, marriage, family life, and village society. He was different from the medieval European serf and the Japanese farmer (kenin, “house man”). As John K. Fairbank and Merle Goldman point out, the Chinese peasant, “both in law and in fact, [was] free, if he had the means,” to leave his village or to purchase more land.⁵ He established a self-sustaining farm by owning a small piece of land. Jonathan D. Spence finds it difficult to distinguish the peasant from the landowner in China. “There were millions of peasant proprietors who owned a little more land than they needed for subsistence, and they might farm their own land with the help of some seasonal laborers. Others, owning a little less land than they needed for subsistence, might rent an extra fraction of an acre or hire themselves out as casual labor in the busy seasons.”⁶ Others further argue that rural China maintained the “ideal and legal structure of an open class pattern of social mobility” from imperialism to the Republican Period, even though “mobility was highly constrained.”⁷ The dream of the Chinese peasant was to own more land and thereby to better provide for his family. His nightmare was losing his land and failing in his family responsibilities.

Traditionally, the Chinese emperor and his imperial system promised the peasant opportunities and protection. Therefore, the peasant sustained traditional ideas, ethical codes, and a mutual obligation between the emperor and himself to serve the empire. For more than two thousand years, the Chinese peasant was subordinate to the will of the emperor and tried to meet his duties. Even the Disney movie Mulan accurately depicts this obligation: the father, as the head of a peasant household, feels guilty and embarrassed about his daughter's participation in warfare not because of her gender but because of his inability to take his own place among the ranks to defend his country and protect his family.⁸ Confucianism, an official ideology of classical China, justified an authoritarian family pattern as the basis for social order in political as well as domestic life.⁹ The role of the emperor and his officials was merely that of the father writ large. A district magistrate who represented the emperor was called the father and mother of the people (fumuguan, “parent-official”). The philosophy of Confucius (551–479 B.C.) became classical because it provided ideas on how to overcome the disorders that all Chinese rulers had to face during the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 B.C.) and the Warring States Period (475–221 B.C.), many years of ferocious warfare aimed at expansion and annexation among the seven states.

Continuing social disorder and endless warfare required solutions during these two periods. Many schools of philosophy and strategy flourished, creating a situation in which “a hundred schools contended.” The best and most influential military work was Bingfa (The Art of War), a short book by Sun Zi (Sun Tzu).¹⁰ His strategies dominate the thirteen chapters, and his goal, winning the battle, underlies the whole book. The Art of War is the first important work on strategy and theory in world military history. Michael Neiberg emphasizes that its “principles are still studied today the world over. Sun Tzu outlined many military doctrines that remain familiar to any soldier including surprise, mobility, flexibility, and deception. The Art of War, later revived by Mao in China, formed the basis of many guerrilla doctrines in the twentieth century.”¹¹

During the Warring States Period, the king of Qin embarked upon a dramatic conquest of the separate kingdoms. Having drafted a massive infantry army, he had an efficient military machine under strong commanders. Instead of using chariots, his army possessed cavalry, superior iron weapons, and crossbows, all relatively new developments.¹² His attacks on the other kingdoms, especially siege battles, were forceful and merciless. In 221 B.C., his effort was crowned with success when China was unified under Qin (Ch'in, from which China gets its Western name). The unification of China was followed by the establishment of a highly centralized regime, the Qin Dynasty (221–206 B.C.), the first of its kind in Chinese history. Ancient China was over, and imperial China had begun. Having concentrated all power in his own hands, Qin Shi Huang (who took the name Shi Huangdi, or first emperor; reigned 221–210 B.C.) proceeded to establish a huge bureaucracy. This monarchical, or imperial, system lasted for more than two thousand years without significant changes.

The emperor wanted to have a huge army to create a center of political gravity at his capital. A large number of peasants were drafted through a centralized taxation system. The entire imperial system was supported by two main social groups, taxpaying peasants and rich landowners. Qin terminated the city-state system and completed a transfer of landownership from dynastic families, relatives, and lords to private owners. The peasant paid onerous corvée and taxation. Regular taxes alone constituted two-thirds of his harvest. He was also required to spend a month every year fulfilling military duties and completing work on local roads, canals, palaces, and imperial tombs. If he failed to pay taxes, he had to extend his service in the army. The total number of peasants Qin Shi Huang recruited to build the Efang Palace and the precursor to the Great Wall and to serve as soldiers for the defense of the frontier exceeded two million.¹³

The Great Wall served two purposes for the empire. It was built for defense against the northern “barbarians,” including the nomadic Xiongnu, Turks, Khitan, Mongols, Xianbei, Nüzhen, and Manchus. Internally, it walled in the Chinese society and created a political centripetal force toward the emperor. The construction of the Great Wall began in the western desert and ended at the eastern coast, stretching for two thousand miles. Qin Shi Huang had no difficulty in mobilizing manpower: China's population reached fifty-four million by the end of Qin (at which time the population of the Roman Empire was no more than forty-six million).¹⁴

In Qin's draft system, all male peasants were required to register at the age of twenty-one. Many of them served for two years between the ages of twenty-three and fifty-six. The imperial bureaucracy carried out recruitment at different levels.¹⁵ Reporting late for military duty was a capital offense. Through Qin Shi Huang's sponsoring of legalism, he influenced the whole future Chinese conception of law as a hierarchy in its function of establishing a general scale of worthiness and unworthiness, merit and demerit.

After Qin, the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-a.d. 220) continued the conscription system through its provincial (jun) and county (xian) recruiting offices. Having witnessed the power of peasants during the period of peasant war and learned a lesson from the quick collapse of the Qin regime, the rulers of Han paid particular attention to the promotion of agriculture.¹⁶ They carried out a policy of “less corvée and light taxation” to “enable the nation to recuperate and build up its strength.”¹⁷ Needless to say, a policy of this kind was most beneficial to economic and military development. The Han emperors began to conquer the territory outside the Great Wall. In 111 B.C., Wudi (the martial emperor; reigned 140–87 B.C.) destroyed and annexed the semi-sinicized state of Nan Yue and started a thousand years of Chinese rule over what is now northern Vietnam. He conquered Korea in 108 B.C., and a Chinese command remained at P’y

ngyang until 313 a.d.¹⁸ Chinese soldiers began to wear lamellar armor, with overlapping leather or metal plates sewn onto a cloth. Light and flexible, the armor provided better protection during the frequent offensive campaigns.

The emperor needed a large expeditionary army for China's new central position in Asia. Successful military expeditions and territorial expansion had convinced the Han emperors and the people that their civilization was superior. The Han Dynasty became the first glorious dynasty in Chinese history, and the Chinese people began to call themselves the Han people (Hanzu; Han nationals, 90 percent of the current population). The Han emperors believed that China (Zhongguo) was the “central kingdom,” “superior to any other people and nation ‘under the heaven’ and that it thus occupies a ‘central’ position in the known universe.”¹⁹ This perception, combined with a moral cosmology, elevated the Chinese emperor to the position of the son of heaven, who possessed supreme power and followed heavenly missions—the mandate of heaven. It justified Wudi's military invasions that incorporated the “barbarian” people into the Chinese civilization through a continuous process of acculturation. Han emperors’ success forced many later rulers to compare their reigns with the glorious age of antiquity in terms of territory and geopolitics.

To secure China's central position in Asia, Han emperors maintained a large army of more than one million men. The conscription system, however, did not meet the extraordinary demands of frequent wars, even though the emperors had extended the age range of service to between twenty and sixty-five. The later Han emperors began to include criminals and paid recruits in the army. These measures failed to stop the decline of the dynasty. Its efforts to create an Asian powerhouse drained its resources and provided no significant economic return.

Chinese historians describe their past as a series of “dynastic cycles” because successive dynasties repeated this story.²⁰ After the collapse of the Han Dynasty, China had two long periods of division and civil wars (the Three Kingdoms Period, 220–80, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, 317–582). During the Sui Dynasty (581–618), although the emperors reunified the country, they squandered an enormous amount of manpower and financial resources in building palaces for their own comfort and vanity. They attempted to reconquer Korea three times, and several million peasants were drafted as soldiers and laborers for the military expeditions. As a result, the peasants were exhausted and the Sui treasury was nearly empty. The burdens on the peasants had become unbearable. They began new uprisings, which dealt severe blows to the Sui regime. While the flame of peasant uprisings was burning across the country, local landlords were allowed to recruit troops of their own and occupy various parts of China. They safeguarded and then extended their power and influence. In 617, the aristocrat Li Yuan and his son Li Shimin started a revolt and quickly occupied Chang'an, the Sui capital. The following year, the Sui emperor was assassinated by one of his bodyguards, and his death marked the end of the Sui Dynasty. Li assumed the imperial title at Chang'an and called his new regime the Tang Dynasty (618–907), which became one of the most glorious dynasties and made China central to Asian affairs once again.

Tang emperors needed a self-sustaining army to prevent military spending from bankrupting the dynasty. To secure manpower and economic resources for military needs, Tang rulers carried on the fubing system, a peasant-soldier reserve system established by the Northern Wei Dynasty (386–535; established in north China by Turks), as the main source for new recruitments. There were 634 junfu (command headquarters) across the country. Each selected soldiers from among the local peasants who had received land through the land equalization system (juntianzhi). In 624, to increase the source of tax revenue, the Tang ruler adopted this land system and a tripartite tax system. Under the new system, a peasant above the age of eighteen received a small piece of land, of which one-fifth could be sold or left to his children. The other four-fifths must be returned to the government upon his retirement or death. The new land policy slowed the concentration of land in the hands of big landlords and redistributed it among the peasants.²¹ The men in the fubing system were peasants in peacetime and reported to the local headquarters to serve in wartime. Locally, the two-tier system of provinces and counties prevailed except in border and strategic areas, which were administered by garrison commands. The chief executive of each command was responsible for military as well as civil affairs as a military governor-general.²² The local power of military governors-general increased throughout the Tang Dynasty.

To stop the decentralization, after Tang, the Song Dynasty (960–1279) divided the fubing into the central or urban army (panbing) and the local or village militia (xiangbing).²³ The first Song emperor, Zhao Kuangyin (Chao K’uang-yin; reigned 960–76), former commander of the imperial guards, took several measures to prevent the reemergence of separatist local r...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Note on Transliteration
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Peasants and Revolutions
• 2. The Formative Years
• 3. Transformation in Korea
• 4. Russianizing the PLA
• 5. Building Missiles and the Bomb
• 6. Crises and Politics
• 7. Border Conflicts and the Cultural Revolution
• 8. Survivor and Reformer
• 9. Technocrats and the New Generation
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index