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employment insurance, health care, and retirement programs. The Chinese
government’s legitimacy is largely based on its ability to generate economic growth and
meet popular demands for material benefits. Thus, social domestic stability is likely to
compete with national security for the central government’s attention in the years ahead.
James Mulvenon, Director of Defense Group Inc. and a former political scientist at
the Rand Corporation, notes that historically the Chinese military have relied on their
own resources to generate revenues. The imperial system placed the burden of military
financing on the soldiers. Soldiers were often seasonal workers on army lands between
wars. This system was continued under communism as the central government had very
little resources to allocate to its military. By the 1980s, the PLA had over 20,000
enterprises employing several million workers in various sectors. Military planes and
trucks were put to use for the benefit of generating revenues. By the mid 1990s, the
government came to realize that the PLA was devoting more resources to generating
revenues than preparing to defend the country. Corruption also quickly set in. In July
1998, in a decision that had apparently secured the approval of the top military brass,
President Jiang Zemin ordered the PLA to dissolve its business empire—a process that
is still in progress. In exchange for its cooperation, the military was promised increases
in defence budgets to meet its needs.
If economic prosperity has pushed millions of Chinese citizens above the poverty
line, it has also created problems. One of these, competition for human resources
between the private economy and the military, is fast becoming a nightmare for the latter.
The PLA had to turn imaginative to attract talented men and women to its ranks.
Conscription in China was becoming more and more resisted by a populace that was
lured by the higher wages offered by the private sector. Sijin Cheng, a China analyst at
the Eurasia Group, narrates this story by describing the military conscription system in
China and the challenges it has been facing in the context of a booming economy with
no end apparently in sight.
Between 1985 when China began cuts in its military personnel and the end of the
latest targets set for 2010, the PLA will have seen its ranks reduced by 1.7 million
soldiers. Demobilizing so many military in an economy that in the best years has to
create millions of jobs for its university graduates is a recipe for disaster—unless it is a
managed demobilization. The sensitivity of the issue is not lessened by the fact that
peasant uprisings in China have often been led by demobilized soldiers. Maryanne
Klivehan-Wise, a deputy director at the CNA Corporation, takes up this story by
examining how the government, both at the central and local levels, managed this
process. We find out that demobilization is only the first step in a larger process that
includes finding new jobs for these ex-soldiers in other government departments or the
private sector, or retirement.
Finally, militia and the reserves is the subject of Dennis Blasko’s paper. Blasko, a
retired US military intelligence officer, has written extensively on the Chinese military. His
focus has generally been on the ground forces. In the current paper, Blasko highlights
the importance the militia and reserves are taking in supporting regular forces in their
march towards fighting war under modern conditions. He finds that the reforms taking
place in the military is also being implemented in the militia and reserves. Blasko’s work
sheds light in an area that has been poorly covered.
All the contributors have used Chinese sources to the benefit of the readers. Solidly
argued, their papers put more meat on a subject area that is just maturing. In the opinion
of this reviewer, readers would benefit from reading a political history of modern China
prior to delving into this book. Some of the authors, all experts in the China field, tend to
assume prior knowledge of Chinese history. For anyone who aspires to become an
expert in the field of Chinese military studies, this book is a must read.
Canadian Army Journal Vol. 11.1 Spring 2008