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

oadcast about the exercise at the time. Little also is
known about the national-level decisionmaking process
that led to the reversal of the decades-old policy
of not training with foreign militaries. Such a decision
would likely have to be made within the Central Military
Commission (CMC), probably with the consent
of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo and/or the
Foreign Affairs Leading Small Group. While the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, (9/11), probably
added impetus to this decision, the Chinese government
previously had been concerned about the threat
of terrorism and other non-traditional security challenges.
For example, as early as the first White Paper
on National Defense in 1998 the government had
identified “terrorism, arms proliferation, smuggling
and trafficking in narcotics, environmental pollution,
waves of refugees, and other transnational issues”
as “new threats to international security.” 9 In March
2000, the defense ministers of the “Shanghai Five” (the
precursor to the SCO) declared:
They would never tolerate national separatism, religious
extremism or terrorism, and that they would resolutely
oppose any activity by such forces on their respective
territory against other countries. They pledged
to jointly take effective measures to crack down on such
activities so as to safeguard regional peace and stability.
The five agreed that they would further study the possibility
of strengthening confidence- building measures in
the military field, promote cooperation between frontier
departments, and jointly combat transnational crimes,
stage joint exercises in preventing dangerous military
activities, combating international terrorists and carrying
out emergency rescue and disaster relief, share
peace-keeping experiences and coordinate with each
other in their peace- keeping operations. 10
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