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

making under difficult circumstances. Psychological
pressure can be intense for officers and, perhaps more
so, for young soldiers dealing with civilian casualties
during disaster rescue operations. MOOTW also
require a high level of cooperation between military
officers and civilian government and Party officials—
a level of cooperation that is apparently difficult for
some officers to accept. 2
This chapter uses openly published Chinese sources
to examine selected recent internal security operations
and the lessons that China’s military draws from
those operations. 3 We will be looking specifically at
disaster rescue and relief as seen in the snow and ice
emergency of January-February 2008 and the Wenchuan
earthquake of May 2008, at the handling of four
violent mass incidents in 2007-08, and at the riots in
Lhasa (March 2008) and Urumqi (July 2009). To begin
with, however, we will look at the legal framework
within which the PLA, the PAP, the militia, and reserve
forces responsibilities for MOOTW are delineated.
4
MILITARY OPERATIONS OTHER THAN WAR:
LEGAL AND INSTITUTIONAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
The Chinese military’s internal security responsibilities
fall within the broad category of “diversified
military tasks.” The concept of “diversified military
tasks,” first introduced at least as early as 2004 and
emphasized at the Chinese Communist Party’s Seventeenth
Congress in 2007, calls for the PLA, the PAP,
the militia, and the reserves to be prepared to handle
a range of responsibilities far wider than simply deterring
and if necessary defending against aggression by
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