The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

The First Dimension: Vertical Discourse.
Perhaps the most significant contradiction is between
the costs of army building and the limited resources
made available to the PLA for the undertaking.
The New Historic Missions issued in late 2004
outline an extremely wide array of responsibilities for
the armed forces and the PLA in particular. Assuming
Chinese soldiers are prepared to take on additional
responsibilities despite the daunting challenges involved
(see below), the fundamental issue becomes
one of receiving adequate funding. General Zhu Qi,
Commander of the Beijing Military Region, addressing
a wide audience at a higher echelon and outside
the PLA pyramid, observed in mid-2005 in the pages
of the CCP’s most prominent journal: “We must soberly
recognize that there are still some problems in
the scale, structure, efficiency and balance of army
building; indeed, there is a contradiction between the
increasingly fast pace of army building today and the
comparatively limited investment available.” 20
In this context, a Chinese general’s wistful remark
in 2007 takes on greater meaning. In front of a U.S.
audience which included the author, the officer commented
that China’s extended period of largely uninterrupted
sustained economic growth and peace has
been a mixed blessing for the PLA. On one hand, he
explained, this situation allowed for significant state
funding for military modernization; but on the other,
he lamented that this state of affairs provided no sense
of urgency to drive the defense buildup anywhere fast
enough as he would have liked. 21 Certainly military
dissatisfaction with the size of the defense budget
is neither unique to China or a new phenomenon in
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