Edited by Laurie Burkitt Andrew Scobell Larry M. Wortzel July 2003

462 Pages·2003·1.76 MB·English

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY:
THE CHINESE PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY AT 75
Edited by
Laurie Burkitt
Andrew Scobell
Larry M. Wortzel
July 2003
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ISBN 1-58487-126-1
ii
CONTENTS
Foreword
Ambassador James R. Lilley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Part I: Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Introduction: The Lesson Learned by China’s Soldiers
Laurie Burkitt, Andrew Scobell, and Larry M. Wortzel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. China’s Defense Establishment: The Hard Lessons of Incomplete
Modernization
Paul H. B. Godwin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Part II: The Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3. PLA Ground Forces Lessons Learned: Experience and Theory
Dennis J. Blasko. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4. PLA Air Force, 1949-2002: Overview and Lessons Learned
Kenneth W. Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5. The People’s Liberation Army Navy after Half a Century:
Lessons Learned in Beijing
Bernard D. Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
6. The People’s Liberation Army and China’s Space and Missile Development:
Lessons from the Past and Prospects for the Future
Mark A. Stokes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Part III: The Campaigns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
7. How Beijing Evaluates Military Campaigns: An Initial Assessment
Ron Christman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
8. From Surprise to Stalemate: What the People’s Liberation Army
Learned from the Korean War — A Half-Century Later
John J. Tkacik, Jr.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
9. Concentrating Forces and Audacious Action: PLA Lessons
from the Sino-Indian War
Larry M. Wortzel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
10. The 1979 Chinese Campaign in Vietnam: Lessons Learned
Edward C. O’Dowd and John F. Corbett, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
11. The Lessons of the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis: Developing a New Strategy
Toward the United States and Taiwan
Arthur S. Ding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
iii
Part IV: Domestic Deployments and Civil-Military Relations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

12. Lessons Learned from the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Massacre
June Teufel Dreyer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
13. Seventy-five Years of Civil-Military Relations: Lessons Learned
Andrew Scobell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
About the Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
iv
FOREWORD
With the armed forces of the People’s Republic of China
celebrating their 75th anniversary on August 1, 2002, it only seemed
appropriate and timely to take stock of the world’s largest military.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has officially been in existence
for three-quarters of a century, and its history is one filled with
turmoil and warfare. One weekend in September 2002, a group of
PLA specialists gathered at Carlisle Barracks, the home of the U.S.
Army War College, to assess what lessons China’s soldiers had
drawn from the history of their own armed forces.
This volume constitutes the final product of months of extensive
research by the individual authors and hours of intense discussion
at the 3-day conference by approximately 50 participants. The
conference was sponsored jointly by the American Enterprise
Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the U.S. Army War College.
It is with great pleasure that I commend this book to anyone with a
serious interest in the Chinese military.
Ambassador James R. Lilley
Senior Fellow
American Enterprise Institute
v
PART I:
OVERVIEW

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION:
THE LESSON LEARNED BY CHINA’S SOLDIERS
Laurie Burkitt
Andrew Scobell
Larry M. Wortzel
The title of this volume, “The Lessons of History: The Chinese
People’s Liberation Army at 75,” captures well the overall theme
of the twelve chapters that follow. The primary focus is not on
summarizing the lessons that analysts or scholars from outside
China have learned when they look back at the past three-quarters
of a century of Chinese military history. Rather, the emphasis of
this volume is to assess key lessons that the top ranks of the People’s
Liberation Army (PLA) have drawn from their own military’s 75-
year history. The reader should be clear at the outset: this volume
is not a comprehensive up-to-date overview of the state of the PLA;
nor is it a comprehensive 75-year history of the Chinese communist
military. Anyone seeking these will have to look elsewhere.1 The
primary value of this volume, we believe, is that it provides insights
into what Chinese military leaders themselves take from their past.
Learning Chinese Lessons and Avoiding Pitfalls of Analysis.
The PLA is certainly not monolithic and to attribute a single,
collective point of view is foolish, if not futile. Nevertheless, the
contributors to this volume attempt to distill lessons learned by the
Chinese military as an institution. However, in many cases, it is
impossible to assert with 100 percent reliability what precise lessons
have been gleaned by the PLA. Wherever possible, the contributors
have used Chinese published source material originating from
within what Paul Godwin calls “China’s Defense Establishment.”
Moreover, it should be noted that the analyses in this volume are
based entirely on open source materials.
There are challenges for any outsider researching a military
organization, and there are particular challenges in studying an
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opaque institution like the PLA.2 Since analysts are not always privy
to the classified studies conducted for the internal use of the Chinese
military, there is the ever-present danger of dutifully parroting the
propaganda published in official works produced for public and/or
foreign consumption. Often the researcher is left to read between the
lines, discerning what is left unsaid or taking the logic of the official
printed lesson a step further. These challenges can be partially
overcome by supplementing open sources with internally circulated
materials wherever possible and through interviews and firsthand
observation. For the non-Chinese researcher, another challenge
to be overcome in studying China’s armed forces is that of mirror
imaging. Many PLA analysts today have served or are serving in the
militaries of their own countries and still others work in the defense
intellectual communities.3 There can be a tendency to presume that
all militaries think and operate more or less like one’s own does.
Yet, the kinds of lessons the U.S. Army may draw from a particular
experience may be very different from those that might be drawn by
the PLA’s ground forces. Fortunately, mirror imaging is kept under
control because most specialists have had to immerse themselves in
Chinese language, history, and culture often for a decade or more.
Many have spent months--if not years--of their professional lives in
China with day-to-day interaction with the PLA.
Lessons or Reactions? Individual or Institutional? Learned or
Lost?
What is a lesson? As conference participant Wendy Frieman
cautioned, lesson should not be conflated with reaction. Soldiers and
strategists often have gut reactions. But these are not the same as an
individual or an institution learning a lesson. Even if an individual
battlefield commander has learned a lesson, that does not mean an
army as a whole has absorbed a lesson. Dennis Vetock, in his history
of U.S. Army Lesson Learning, observes:
An army learns lessons after it incorporates the conclusions
derived from experience into institutional form. Out of the
commander’s experience may come a lesson, and from that lesson
may come new or adapted doctrine or perhaps dissemination of
potentially useful information. Only after its institutionalization
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can the lesson be correctly described in the past tense as a lesson
learned. Until then it remains just a lesson or usable experience, a
semantic distinction that few fully appreciate.4
Moreover, just as lessons can be learned, they can also be “lost.”5
In short, for a military lesson to be truly “learned,” it must result
in a real change or transformation and this kind of thoroughgoing
institutional change can take years, if not longer. Indeed,
fundamental change does not come quickly or easily to a large
bureaucratic organization such as a military institution.6
Military Modernization: Lessons and Frustrations.
The history of the PLA in the eyes of its 2.5 million service
members is a glorious one of heroic struggle and triumph over
insurmountable obstacles. A fundamental lesson learned by the
PLA is that the weak can triumph over the strong. No matter how
daunting the difficulties and how superior the foe appears to be,
ultimate victory is possible if selfless Chinese soldiers and civilians
doggedly pursue their tasks. After all, China built an atomic bomb, a
daunting undertaking,7 and the PLA Navy and Air Force developed
from extremely humble beginnings, each officially established as a
separate service in 1949. While the PLA remains an overwhelmingly
“muddy boots” military, its air and naval arms have made significant
progress in recent decades in terms of quality of equipment, caliber
of personnel, and operational capabilities. Here it is worth quoting
General Liu Zhen, who recalled thoughts he had running through
his mind when he was appointed commander of the air force of
the Chinese People’s Volunteers on the eve of China’s military
intervention in the Korean War. General Liu wrote in his memoirs
that upon his appointment, he had to admit to himself that the whole
subject of airpower was a “mystery.” In fact, he had absolutely no
experience in commanding aircraft formations. Liu went on to state
the obvious: “. . . in our level of tactics and technology we were way,
way below those of our enemy [i.e., the U.S. Air Force].” In facing
his apparently hopeless task, Liu could only draw inspiration from
the fact that the PLA had long struggled against unbelievable odds
on the battlefield, always learning through a painful process of trial
and error. He was comforted when recalling: “I . . . had a resolute
5