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

2 years earlier. After tracking in detail the development
of the CCP’s national security “theory” from
Mao Zedong through Hu Jintao’s revised “historical
mission,” the director of the AMS War Theory and
Strategic Research Department, Major General Shou
Xiaosong, writes of the PLA’s needs in “entering the
new century”:
For instance, by adjusting to the trend of national interest
expansion and modern war development and under
the precondition of sticking to the defensive nature of
military strategy, we need to appropriately develop
strategic offensive force and strategic projection force,
increase the depth of our strategic defense, expand from
defending territory toward defending national strategic
space, and plan as a whole the security of territorial
land, territorial seas, and territorial air space as well as
the security of oceans, outer space, and electromagnetic
space; … 11
General Shou later repeats the common “two incompatibles”
assessment found among PLA authors:
Compared with safeguarding the strategic needs of
national security and the military development trends
around the world, there is obvious inadequacy in China’s
military strategic capability and incompatibility
between the level of military modernization and the requirements
for winning wars under informatized conditions,
effectively dealing with various kinds of security
threats, and accomplishing diversified military tasks. 12
For General Shou and the vast majority of military
assessments, Hu’s adjustment of the PLA’s historic
missions in support of China’s changing national security
environment and strategy, and the diversified
tasks this adjustment required, demanded a more
capable and modernized armed forces than existed,
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