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

ational capabilities. As James Q. Wilson noted, when
an organization can concentrate wholeheartedly on
overcoming the challenges of one problem, significant
and rapid progress can be forthcoming. A corollary of
this propensity is that too many missions can sap an
organization’s vitality and make it lose focus. 48
Challenge # 2: Can the PLA Handle the
Frustrations?
The expansion of missions and tasks is a recipe
for frustration within the PLA. Following from the
above analysis, too many demands may result in the
PLA feeling completely overwhelmed. There is clearly
already a widespread sense of frustration among
some Chinese soldiers who feel they are being asked
to do too much. In May 2009, editors at Liberation Army
Daily asked: “Fundamentally, what are the kinds of
capabilities that the military needs? Just what kinds
of requirements need to be brought to the forefront
of core military capabilities?” The questions came in
the introduction to an important article intended to
provide some authoritative answers to the readers of
the newspaper. 49 Titled “Forge Military Capabilities in
Sync with the Times,” the article was written by someone
who would seem to have the respect of his comrades
in arms in the Lower Echelon and whose words
would likely carry weight with them—55-year-old
Major General Wang Xixin (王西欣), a warfighter who
commands one of the PLA’s most prominent units,
the 38th Group Army stationed in the Beijing Military
Region. 50
The bottom line is that the PLA does not want to
be distracted from its “core” mission of warfighting
and the senior political and military leadership have
121