"Where Will The People's Liberation Army Go Next?" - By CWP Alum Joel Wuthnow
For its first 65 years, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rarely ventured beyond Asia. Although Chinese troops surged across the Korean, Indian, and Vietnamese borders at times during the Cold War and prepared to take Taiwan by force, they had neither the capabilities nor a compelling rationale to deploy to more distant regions. Yet beginning in the 1990s and accelerating in the 21st century, the PLA has been out and about more widely in several contexts: UN peacekeeping missions, antipiracy operations off the Horn of Africa, and ad hoc relief missions in places such as Libya and Yemen.
In Protecting China’s Interests Overseas: Securitization and Foreign Policy, Andrea Ghiselli explains this shift as deriving first from China’s changing role in the world—protecting the lives and property of Chinese citizens who had “gone out” in search of new markets prompted civilian leaders to call on the PLA to be able to do more abroad. But the PLA was not initially sold on the idea. Organizations take time to adopt new missions and sometimes need a shock to stimulate deeper structural and cultural changes. Ghiselli provides convincing evidence that the 2011 Libyan Civil War, which required the PLA to repatriate some 36,000 citizens, served as a pivotal wake-up call (pp. 58–59). Spurred to action, the PLA developed new contingency plans, capabilities, training regimes, and institutions for overseas missions.
Re-engineering the PLA’s identity as an expeditionary force was an easier sell for some branches than others. Ghiselli points to bureaucratic interests to explain why the PLA Navy embraced what Hu Jintao referred to as “new historic missions,” including the protection of sea lanes, even before the Libya crisis: missions in the “far seas” required larger ships and budgets (p. 56). The ground forces, by contrast, were more skeptical. I recall a PLA officer remarking that there were at best mixed feelings within the
Wuthnow, Joel. Asia Policy; Seattle Vol. 17, Iss. 2, (Apr 2022): 156-159. - https://www.proquest.com/openview/4abb1481749f4031dee0fc7532f3ed18/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2036314
Dr. Joel Wuthnow is a senior research fellow in the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs within the Institute for National for Strategic Studies at NDU. His research areas include Chinese foreign and security policy, Chinese military affairs, U.S.-China relations, and strategic developments in East Asia. In addition to his duties in INSS, he also serves as an adjunct professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
His recent books and monographs, all from NDU Press, include The PLA Beyond Borders: Chinese Military Operations in Regional and Global Context (2021, lead editor), System Overload: Can China's Military Be Distracted in a War over Taiwan? (2020), Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA: Assessing Chinese Military Reforms (2019, co-editor), and China's Other Army: The People's Armed Police in an Era of Reform (2019). His research has also appeared in journals such as Asia Policy, Asian Security, The China Quarterly, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Joint Force Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Strategic Studies, and in edited volumes.
Prior to joining NDU, Dr. Wuthnow was a China analyst at CNA, a postdoctoral fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University, and a pre-doctoral fellow at The Brookings Institution. His degrees are from Princeton University (A.B., summa cum laude, in Public and International Affairs), Oxford University (M.Phil. in Modern Chinese Studies), and Columbia University (Ph.D. in Political Science). He is proficient in Mandarin.
Photo Credit: By Original uploader was Nicolau at zh.wikipedia - Originally from zh.wikipedia; description page is/was China Emblem PLA.svg., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2531982
