The Armed Forces of China (review)

This volume, part of the I. B. Taurus "Armed Forces of Asia" series, provides a detailed look at how China is pursuing military modernization. According to author You Ji, the focus of the book is on analyzing the current state of affairs and the trends for the next few decades of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), but it does not attempt to answer all questions. The author comments specifically that he does not address PLA history or civil-military relations (p. xvii). This is a mixed blessing: the reader is spared yet another recount of the Long March and the glories of Civil War Red Armies, but the reader also misses a specific consideration of how the PLA's domestic political realities affect modernization efforts.

The book is organized into seven chapters in addition to an introduction and conclusion. Chapter 1 deals with the PLA's search for a viable military strategy that combines both the hope and reality of Chinese military modernization against the backdrop of a continuing military inferiority that some feel will get worse, not better, over the next few years. Force structure and deployment changes reflecting that search are discussed in chapter 2, while the details and implications of the strategy itself are dealt with in chapter 3. The next three chapters cover trends in China's nuclear, air, and naval forces. These chapters are followed by an exposition of the implications of PLA modernization for the Asia-Pacific region. The author concludes with a final chapter that attempts to put the pieces of PLA development back together, tying a nicely balanced assessment of current capabilities with a caution against underestimating the potential of China's military forces. A helpful list of acronyms and an extensive bibliography add to the value of the book.

Overall, this book has several key strong points to recommend it. It is particularly valuable in presenting a largely Chinese perspective on the PLA. While there are Western sources cited, the author chooses to use PLA documents as his predominant source of information. His analysis of PLA advancements is balanced, with successes and weaknesses clearly stated. From the discussion on strategy and doctrine, the reader is left with a sense of a Chinese military that is shifting mentally to a much more aggressive, offense-oriented frame of reference faster than the reality of modernization efforts currently supports. Changes in doctrine and strategy, as they have developed over the past twenty years, have consistently pushed the PLA to do more, faster, and further than it had the equipment or training to do. As the author puts it:

The PLA indeed has an ambitious modernization program, and China's strong economic growth will eventually deliver what the PLA wants. The relationship between economic strength and military power is very clear in the long term. In the short term, however, the PLA will endure a fairly long and painful transition in which, as pointed out in Chapter 3, more and more weapons systems become obsolete but replacements are difficult to come by. This transition vacuum should be taken seriously in evaluating the PLA's capability. It is particularly important not to confuse ambition with capability—the PLA's doctrinal desires at present stand in sharp contrast to its severely limited capabilities.

(p. 234)

While that might, at first blush, give comfort to Western militaries looking at immediate- threat scenarios, it may be useful to consider that in the early 1970s the U.S. Army and Air Force were also proclaiming an aggressive doctrine for an air-land battle, for which they had insufficient hardware or technology.

In addition to the enlightening sections on doctrine and strategy, the author provides excellent coverage of development trends in the air, navy, and missile forces as well as in the areas of C3I, logistics, information warfare, force restructuring, and logistics.

Despite the high overall value of the book, there are weaknesses that detract from...