The Chinese Army after Mao (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 243 It becomes clear in the final chapters that the author really had two books in mind. In combining them into one, both got slighted. He begins and ends the book with a brief discussion of recurring patterns in U.S.-Soviet relations that can be traced throughout the postwar period. But the outline of those patterns is not filled out; a more detailed analysis would be welcome. Similarly, the memoir seems incomplete. How much more could he have told us about how Kissinger's NSC operated? How did it differ from Brent Scowcroft's? What was it like to serve under Kissinger at the State Department? Hyland gives glimpses of these matters, and others; some vignettes are priceless, such as Brezhnev filching binder clips or sitting in a Crimean grotto offering the somber Nixon a treaty aimed at the Chinese; but at the end the reader has snacked, not dined. Mortal RivaL· is revealing and incisive; would that there were more of it. The Chinese Army after Mao. By Ellis Joffe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. 210 pp. $20.00/cloth. Reviewed by Paul Humes Folta, Ph.D. candidate, SAIS. The passing of Mao Tse-tung and the successful promotion of Deng Xiaoping's agenda for China's modernization have resulted in an important new direction in Chinese military affairs. The significance of this new direction has become increasingly obvious to foreign observers as China's role in regional and international politics has grown. Its equal significance for Chinese domestic politics has remained less clear to outsiders. Ellis Joffe, a scholar who is well known to those who have studied China's defense policy, plainly describes this new direction in his new book, The Chinese Army after Mao. Joffe's success in weaving together the different strands of the Chinese military's involvement in Chinese politics will help increase the reader's knowledge of this subject to a level that its importance deserves. Probably the most important aspect of the book is that it clearly identifies the centrality of the military in China's modernization. Joffe's historical overview on the role ofthe military in communist China before Mao's death is essential for understanding its continued influence in post-Mao China. The Chinese defense doctrine of "people's war" is portrayed as being as much an outcome of China's international environment, domestic politics, and industrial condition , as it was an extension of Mao's ideology. While the reader will want to consult other sources for more historical details, Joffe captures the most important events and policies of that era. This provides a useful context and point of contrast with which to understand the present era. Military modernization has been a central factor in post-Mao China, but this appears to be due to a lessening of perceived external threat and a freeing up of resources for other purposes rather than to fear of imminent attack. In his chapter on leadership politics and perceptionsJoffe discusses five potential threats to China. Listed from improbable to more probable they are: general nuclear war, general conventional war, limited nuclear war, limited conventional 244 SAIS REVIEW war, and the indirect threat of encirclement. In his description of each threat Joffe explains how the Chinese leadership has changed its perceptions of its external threat since the Maoist era. Since the most likely threat is now less immediate and direct, Joffe concludes, a gradual modernization of the Chinese army is not seen as jeopardizing China's security. The components of China's military modernization are then covered in detail. The most obvious change in terms of policy has been the relationship between the military budget and the economy. Here Joffe makes an essential distinction between budget and procurement figures. In 1978, for example, real expenditures for defense were about twice the published budget figures. Joffe, however, later fails to consider procurement figures when using budget figures to show that the military was being subordinated to overall economic growth priorities. Joffe convincingly argues that in terms of strategic policy the military doctrine of people's war has been abandoned and not simply modified, as some people have proposed. First, China is no...