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

the post-Mao era. However, against the backdrop of
a massive expansion of missions for the PLA this lament
is of particular note.
In an effort to counter the frustration in the PLA
with the New Historic Missions handed down by the
CMC, Lieutenant General Wang Guosheng, Commander
of the Lanzhou Military Region, reminded
soldiers that while the missions of the PLA evolved
over time, these were always consistent with the Party’s
historic tasks, the nation’s security interests, the
level of economic development, and the RMA. Writing
in 2008 in the pages of the flagship journal of the
Academy of Military of Sciences, Wang dubbed these
the “four consistents” (四个一致). Coincidentally,
these consistents are ‘consistent’ with the new historic
missions. In the article, Wang reviews the evolving
nature of PLA missions in various historical periods. 22
Reading between the lines, Wang’s message from
the Middle Echelon to his fellow uniformed colleagues
in the Lower Echelon is clearly discernible: Warfighters,
you may be dissatisfied with the New Historic
Missions and fear they are too much of a burden for
the armed forces. Nevertheless, the PLA has always
loyally shouldered the new missions it has been assigned
by the CCP and its CMC whether soldiers liked
them or not. “Missions are historically dynamic; they
are always in flux. . . . New content has always been
continuously added . . .” 23
1 Contradiction; 2 Incompatibles. According to a 2008
New Year’s Day editorial in the Liberation Army Daily:
“At present and for a comparatively long time to come,
the main contradiction in our army building will still
be that our level of modernization is incompatible
with the demands of winning a local war under conditions
of informatization, and that our military capa-
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