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

tributions to secure and maintain world peace, “we
must never depart from the main line of ‘fighting a
war.’” 8 An article in China’s Defense stated that even
though “diversified military tasks” include war and
nonwar operations, it was possible that improving
nonwar capabilities might diminish “core military capability.”
The author pointedly noted an unspecified
U.S. Army training and evaluation center’s conclusion
that “nonwar military actions, particularly peacekeeping
operations, can lower the performance of crucial
skills for war fighting.” 9
A pattern emerged over the years following Hu
Jintao’s “historic missions” speech where military authors
and authors in military publications while supporting
the CMC Chairman’s directive on the PLA’s
“diversified tasks” ultimately stressed that defending
national sovereignty, security, integrity, national interests,
deterring war, defusing crisis, and containing
wars that do erupt depend on the PLA’s military capabilities—capabilities
that of necessity had to be improved.
As a February 2009 PLA Daily author wrote:
At present, on the foundation of the traditional superiority
in people’s war, our nation has formed powerful
domestic defense capabilities, and we are set free
from the threat of large scale invasion. However, there
is still a relatively wide gap between our overall military
capability and the needs of national security and
development; the function scope of military capability
cannot keep up with the steps of national interests’
development, and there is the prominent issue that its
functional strength could not eliminate various kinds of
security threats. 10
A lengthy article in China’s Military Science published
by the PLA’s premier research institution, the Academy
of Military Science (AMS), stressed the same point
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