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

This adjustment recognized that China’s military
modernization programs had raised apprehensions
across Asia and beyond about Beijing’s strategic intent.
These apprehensions threatened to undermine
Beijing’s core foreign policy objective of sustaining an
international environment conducive to the continued
growth and modernization of China’s economy.
Assessment of these issues is organized into six
major components and concludes with some speculations
and policy implications for the United States. The
chapter first provides an overview of PLA responses
to Hu Jintao’s revisions of the armed forces’ roles and
missions. This is followed by a discussion of PLA estimates
of the global security environment it confronted
in 2008 and the defense policy adopted in response to
these estimates. The chapter then broadens its focus
by discussing the PLA’s response to Hu Jintao’s expansion
of the armed forces’ missions. This analysis
is followed by a review of PLA responses to specific
Asia-Pacific security issues. These are divided into
near-term concerns and long-term strategic concerns.
The specific cases addressed are Taiwan, the Korean
Peninsula, South and Central Asia, maritime territorial
and resource disputes, and the United States and
Japan in maritime Asia.
THE PLA AND CHINA’S NATIONAL SECURITY
As a continental power with extensive land and
sea borders, the defense demands on China’s armed
forces are extensive. China’s neighborhood is huge,
composed of Northeast Asia, Russian-Asia, Central
Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and maritime Southeast
and East Asia. All of Asia converges on China,
and Beijing’s national security assessments have to en-
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