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

exercises involving hundreds of troops and were (at
least in public propaganda) hailed as brilliant examples
of PLA prowess. But the difficulties encountered
in mobilizing and delivering forces for the earthquake
disaster relief effort and the vulnerability of south
China’s transportation and power infrastructure as
seen in the snow and ice emergency underline just
how far the PLA has to go before it will be able to reliably
project overwhelming force beyond its borders
under challenging circumstances. 103
While the PLA’s performance in disaster response
indicates some serious weaknesses which should be
of interest to American policymakers, the military response
to mass incidents and ethnic unrest represents
a very different facet of the PLA’s domestic security
responsibilities, and a less straightforward set of implications
for U.S. policy. China’s handling of mass incidents
and ethnic unrest tells us relatively little about
the PLA’s operational capabilities, but the incidents
themselves do have potential significance for American
policymakers.
The Chinese military’s response to mass incidents
and to the unrest in Lhasa and Urumqi shows that
China’s military still remembers the lesson of 1989: the
PAP appears on the front lines, hitting the streets to
restore order, while the PLA itself remains in the background,
playing a supporting role. When deployed
in sufficient numbers and with appropriate rules of
engagement, the PAP (perhaps with some support
from the PLA in particularly serious incidents) has the
training, the equipment and the capability of controlling
violent mass incidents, ethnic and nonethnic. In
any hypothetical scenario in which China successfully
invaded and occupied Taiwan and was faced with serious
urban unrest or even insurgency, the PLA and
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