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

egy’s success and deficiencies. Certainly throughout
the article, General Liang makes no attempt to conceal
that rebuilding military relations with the United
States and Japan was and remains difficult. Nor does he
conceal that the PLA has gained from foreign military
contacts. General Liang refers to the RMA as creating
the most profound changes in military development in
the history of man. By establishing “professional technical
communications” with foreign militaries at multiple
levels including military research universities,
“work units” and headquarters, General Liang states
that the PLA has expanded its understanding of the
RMA and its implications. This has not only helped in
the development of weapons and equipment, but has
given the PLA a greater understanding of the military
environment in which China’s armed forces exist.
Although declaring that the PLA’s “military foreign
relations” were undertaken with individual countries
regardless of their size and whether their military was
advanced or backward, General Liang’s article established
priorities. Of first importance were relations
with the United States’ defense establishment. Links
with the Russian military were given second priority.
General Liang then proceeds to systematically lay out
both the problems and progress the PLA has made
in developing its relationships with foreign military
establishments. His longest discussion is of the problems
effecting relations with the U.S. military, which
he defines as of great importance because of their significance
to world peace and stability. Beginning with
the deterioration of relations created by the PLA Navy’s
F-8 fighter collision with the U.S. Navy’s (USN)
EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft in April 2001, he tracks
the gradual restoration of Sino-American military relations
with the visit of General Guo Boxiong, a CMC
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