History of the People's Liberation Army


The history of the People's Liberation Army began in 1927 with the start of the Chinese Civil War and spans to the present, having developed from a peasant guerrilla force into the largest armed force in the world.

Before the founding of the People's Republic of China

In 1925, the Chinese Communist Party's Central Military Department, was renamed the Central Military Commission. It was first led by Zhang Guotao who was replaced by Zhou Enlai in 1926 as head of the CMC. At the time, the CMC was concurrently the Shanghai District Military Commission. During the First United Front, it not a unified military command structure but was more of an administrative liaison with other armed communist groups.
The divisions of the "Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army" were named according to historical circumstances, sometimes in a nonconsecutive way. Early Communist units often formed by defection from existing Kuomintang forces, keeping their original designations. Moreover, during the Chinese Civil War, central control of separate Chinese Communist Party -controlled enclaves within China was limited, adding to the confusion of nomenclature of Communist forces.
The 1929 Gutian Congress was important in establishing the principle of party control over the military, which continues to be a core principle of the party's ideology. In the short term, this concept was further developed in the June 1930 Program for the Red Fourth Army at All Levels and the winter 1930 Provisional Regulations on the Political Work of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Army, which formally established Party leadership of the military.
By the time of the 1934 Long March, numerous small units had been organized into three unified groups, the First Front Red Army, the Second Front Red Army and the Fourth Front Red Army, also translated as "First Front Red Army", "Second Front Red Army" and "Fourth Front Red Army".
Mao's military thought grew out of the Red Army's experiences in the late 1930s and early 1940s and formed the basis for the people's war concept, which became the doctrine of the Red Army and the People's Liberation Army. In developing his thought, Mao drew on the works of the Chinese military strategist Sun Zi and Soviet and other theorists, as well as on the lore of peasant uprisings, such as the stories found in the classical novel Shuihu Zhuan and the stories of the Taiping Rebellion. Synthesizing these influences with lessons learned from the Red Army's successes and failures, Mao created a comprehensive politico-military doctrine for waging revolutionary warfare. People's war incorporated political, economic, and psychological measures with protracted military struggle against a superior foe. As a military doctrine, people's war emphasized the mobilization of the populace to support regular and guerrilla forces; the primacy of men over weapons, with superior motivation compensating for inferior technology; and the three progressive phases of protracted warfare—strategic defensive, strategic stalemate, and strategic offensive. During the first stage, enemy forces were "lured in deep" into one's own territory to overextend, disperse, and isolate them. The Red Army established base areas from which to harass the enemy, but these bases and other territory could be abandoned to preserve Red Army forces. In addition, policies ordered by Mao for all soldiers to follow, the Eight Points of Attention, instructed the army to avoid harm to or disrespect for the peasants, regardless of the need for food and supplies. This policy won support for the Communists among the rural peasants.
In June 1946, the Civil War between the Kuomintang and the CCP resumed. On September 12, 1946, the Liberation Daily was the first to use the title of "People's Liberation Army" in its editorial. Subsequently, the title of "People's Liberation Army" appeared publicly many times in articles published by Mao Zedong and Xinhua News Agency. On October 3, 1946, the Liberation Daily formally proposed the title of "Chinese People's Liberation Army" for the first time in the editorial "Struggle for the Realization of the January Armistice Agreement and the CPPCC Resolution". At that time, the People's Daily quoted Xinhua News Agency's telegram that in the Northeast Summer Offensive in May 1947, the "Hebei-Chahar-Rehe-Liaoning People's Liberation Army" captured Weichang County. On October 10, 1947, the "Manifesto of the Chinese People's Liberation Army" was published, which marked the change of the name of the entire army to Chinese People's Liberation Army.
By the beginning of 1948, all units of the army were renamed the People's Liberation Army. The CCP Politburo held an enlarged meeting from September 8 to 13, 1948, proposing to build a 5 million PLA. In accordance with the meeting of the Politburo, the CCP Central Committee and the CCP Central Military Commission issued the "Regulations on Unifying the Organization and Unit Numbers of the Whole Army" on November 1, pointing out that the People's Liberation Army is divided into three categories: field troops, local troops and guerrilla troops. All troops above the regiment level were named "People's Liberation Army of China". On January 15, 1949, the CCP Central Military Commission decided to reorganise the regional armies of the PLA into four field armies.

People's Republic of China

In the PRC's early years, the PLA was a dominant foreign policy institution in the country.
Since the 1960s, China had considered the Soviet Union the principal threat to its security; lesser threats were posed by long standing border disputes with Vietnam and India. China's territorial claims and economic interests made the South China Sea an area of strategic importance to China. Although China sought peaceful unification of Taiwan with the mainland China, it did not rule out the use of force against the island if serious internal disturbances, a declaration of independence, or a threatening alliance occurred.
In 1964, the Central Military Commission proposed to abolish ranks in the PLA, stating that ranks were an expression of bourgeois right and hierarchy which led to individualist attitudes, inequality, and a sense of disunity. Ranks were abolished the next year; they remained abolished until they were re-instated in 1988.

Cultural Revolution

On 5 October 1966, the Central Military Commission and the PLA's Department of General Political Tasks directed military academies to dismiss their classes to allow cadets to become more involved in the Cultural Revolution. In doing so, they were acting on Lin Biao's 23 August 1966 for "three month turmoil" in the PLA.
From 1967 to 1971, the PLA was the most powerful political institution in China. To stop the turmoil of the early Cultural Revolution, Mao ordered the PLA to engage in the "three supports and two militarizations": support the Leftist masses, support manufacturing production, support agricultural production, and apply martial law with military administration and training of civilians. From 1967 to 1972, the military replaced civilian governments at provincial, district, county, and city levels with Military Administrative Committees. More than 2.8 million PLA officers and soldiers worked as administrators for schools, factories, enterprises, and villages.
The PLA's role resulted in increased civilian-military integration and growth in the number of PLA soldiers to more than 6 million by the middle of the 1970s.
Lin Biao died in an aircraft crash in 1971. During the subsequent Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign, Mao described Lin as a "closet Confucianist", "bourgeois careerist", conspirator, and "ultra rightist". During the campaign, many generals who had been supported by Lin were removed and military programs Lin had implemented were canceled. In 1973, the PLA completed a thorough re-organization. Thereafter, Marshal Ye Jianying handled the PLA's operations in consultation with Zhou Enlai.

Border disputes in the 1970s

In January 1974, the PLA saw action in the South China Sea following a long-simmering dispute with the Republic of Vietnam over the Paracel Islands. The PLA successfully seized control of three disputed islands in a naval battle and a subsequent amphibious assault.
A Sino-Vietnamese War revealed specific shortcomings in military capabilities and thus provided an additional impetus to the military modernization effort. The border war, the PLA's largest military operation since the Korean War, was essentially a limited, offensive, ground-force campaign. The war had mixed results militarily and politically. Although the numerically superior Chinese forces penetrated about fifty kilometers into Vietnam, the PLA was not on good terms with its supply lines and was unable to achieve a decisive victory in the war. Both China and Vietnam claimed victory.

Military modernization in the 1980s

In 1980, China adopted a new Military Strategic Guideline that envisioned using a combined arms approach and positional warfare to defend against a potential invasion by the Soviet Union.Sino-Soviet relations significantly improved in the early 1980s. In 1984, Deng Xiaoping stated that the People's Liberation Army no longer needed to anticipate an imminent invasion from the Soviet Union.
In 1981, the PLA conducted its largest military exercise in North China since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
In 1984, Deng shifted the PLA's primary mission away from preparing to defend against a Soviet invasion. In 1985, Deng stated that there would be a "strategic transformation" of the PLA to reduce its size and re-allocate resources from it to the civilian economy. Deng announced that the PLA would demobilize 1 million troops.
PLA ranks, having been abolished in 1965, were re-established in 1988.
The Central Military Commission modified the Military Strategic Guideline in December 1988. It changed the PLA's strategic focus from a general war to potential "local wars and armed conflict" on the country's periphery. Because these potential conflicts would not necessarily be against a nuclear superpower, this change also triggered a debate among Chinese policymakers and strategists over the role of nuclear weapons in Chinese military strategy.
Sino-Vietnamese conflicts at the border continued throughout the 1980s.

1990s

Observing the 1990-1991 Gulf War, Chinese strategists concluded that the conflict demonstrated that advances in military technology had shifted the focus of war from occupying territory or annihilating an opposing force to destruction of an enemy's "comprehensive power". In January 1993, the PLA revised its Military Strategic Guideline to focus on "local wars under high-tech conditions" and "strategic deterrence" to prevent the outbreak of war.
China–Vietnam relations normalized in the early 1990s and in 1993 the PLA began large-scale demining campaigns at the border.
During the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the United States bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Believing that the bombing was intentional, Chinese leadership worried that China was significantly lacking in leverage against the United States. In an emergency Politburo meeting on 8 May 1999, Jiang Zemin instructed the CMC to strengthen the PLA to prevent future attacks on Chinese interests. Among the measures China took to close its lack in leverage with the United States were efforts to develop precision missiles and accelerating plans to expand conventional missile forces. China increased military funding, including to speed up the weapons development program Project 995.

2015-2016 reorganization

The "deepening national defense and military reform" was announced in November 2015 at a plenary session of the Central Military Commission 's Central Leading Group for Military Reform.
In 2016, the four traditional departments of the military were replaced by 15 new departments, commissions, and offices led by the CMC.
On 1 February 2016, China replaced its system of seven military regions with newly established Theater Commands: Northern, Southern, Western, Eastern, and Central. In the prior system, operations were segmented by military branch and region. In contrast, each Theater Command is intended to function as a unified entity with joint operations across different military branches.

Timeline

Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)

Chinese Civil War (1945–1950)

People's Republic of China (since 1949)

Taiwan Strait (aftermath of the civil war)

1949–1979

Military modernization (1980s)