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

tary pressure alienated the majority of Taiwanese, affected
Beijing’s international image, and resulted in an
increased financial burden on the state budget. It was
high time that there should be a change in approach,
if not in texture.
The Benefits for the PLA.
Ma’s no-independence policy has brought about
an emerging trend of decombatification in the Taiwan
Strait. Decombatification has been the largest common
denominator in the strategic concerns of Washington,
Beijing, and Taipei. The Democratic Progressive Party’s
(DPP) promotion of de jure independence upset a
strategic framework for the status quo upheld by all
three capitals. Today, the three parties have restored
this strategic framework. In a way, the most visible
beneficiary is, however, the PLA. This can be seen
from the points listed below.
First, the trend of decombatification has allowed
the PLA to break away from a sub-state of war for the
second time in its history since the late 1960s when
Sino-USSR military tensions forced it to prepare for
an imminent war. Large quantities of sub-standard
arms were promptly produced and quickly became
obsolete, a huge waste of resources. 72 In the first half
of this decade, the history repeated itself, though with
qualitative differences. After the Politburo passed
the resolution to accelerate war preparation in 1999,
the Chinese defense industries received an unprecedented
number of orders, and this even stressed the
transportation system. Beijing saw the DPP’s promised
referendum for a new Constitution in 2006 as
the trigger of a Taiwan war that seemed to be more
imminent than common sense judgment would have
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