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

5. New MSGs have been issued in mid-1950s, mid-1960s, early
1970s, mid-1980s, and in 1993. See Finkelstein, “China’s National
Military Strategy,” p. 93.
6. Andrew Scobell, “Why the People’s Army Fired on the
People: The Chinese Military and Tiananmen,” Armed Forces and
Society, Vol. 18, No. 1, Winter 1992, pp. 194-195. The term is that
of Robin Allison Remington who used it to describe the communist
era armed forces of Yugoslavia. See her “Political-Military
Relations in Post-Tito Yugoslavia,” in Pedro Ramet, ed., Yugoslavia
in the 1980s, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985, p. 57. Typically,
civil-military relations in communist party-states have been
described as approximating a “penetration” model in which the
party controls the military by penetrating it. This term is Eric
Nordlinger’s. See his Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977, pp. 15-18.
7. For a comprehensive treatment of the New Historic Missions,
see Daniel M. Harnett, Toward a Globally Focused Chinese Military:
The Historic Missions of the Chinese Armed Forces,Alexandria,
VA: CNA Corporation, 2008. While the preferred term in Chinese
official translations is “historical,” this author—consistent with
Harnett—prefers “historic.” For a Chinese elaboration of the New
Historic Missions, see, for example, Zheng Weiping and Liu Mingfu,
eds., 军队新的历史使命论 (On the Historic Missions of the Military),
Beijing, China: Renmin Wujing Chubanshe, 2005.
8. See, for example, Wang Xixin, “打造与时代同步的核心军事
能力 (“Forge Core Military Capabilities in Sync with the Times”),
解放军报 (Liberation Army Daily), May 2, 2009, p. 6.
9. James Mulvenon, “Chairman Hu and the PLA’s New Historic
Missions,” China Leadership Monitor, No. 27, Winter 2009, p.
7.
10. Perhaps a more apt term would be “MOOTW with Chinese
characteristics.” Whether the PLA’s conception of MOOW
is significantly different to the U.S. military understanding of the
term is an open question to be answered by further research. I am
indebted to Kevin Lanzit for deepening my understanding of this
concept.
128