"Who Does What? Chinese Command And Control In A Taiwan Scenario" - By CWP Alum Joel Wuthnow
Stimulated by the lack of progress on the “core interest” of unification, combat operations against Taiwan have been among primary planning scenarios of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) since the early 1990s.1 Chinese planning has centered on joint campaigns either to persuade Taipei to capitulate, as would be the goal in a firepower strike or blockade, or to seize and occupy the island through a joint island landing campaign. The PLA has thus articulated doctrine for cross-strait campaigns, increased multidomain training, and sought to build forces that could execute the war plans. Significant attention was also given to constraining the U.S. ability to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf. For two decades, however, the PLA lacked a modern joint command structure to take charge of those operations. China’s Soviet-inspired military regions had limited ability to command naval and air forces, which weakened its ability to plan and train for joint operations, while a temporary realignment of authority in wartime would have created delays and provided a valuable warning for China’s opponents. Reforms led by Xi Jinping have reduced those weaknesses. Command arrangements for a Taiwan contingency are nested within the PLA’s new joint command structure, consisting of key decisionmaking nodes at the national...
Dr. Joel Wuthnow is a senior research fellow in the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs within the Institute for National 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 Crossing the Strait: China's Military Prepares for War with Taiwan (2022, lead editor), 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 Asian Perspective, 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 "The following maps were produced by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, unless otherwise indicated." - Perry-Castañeda Library (Cleaned up version of en:Image:Taiwan straits.jpg, which is a work by the United States' government.), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42842
