Contemporary China- CCP, army and the 18th central committee

China’s veteran communist leadership traditionally had close ties with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and ensured that they retain a tight grip over it. The role and importance of the PLA in communist China has grown steadily in importance over the years and its importance for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was brought into sharp focus during the Tiananmen ‘incident’ in 1989. As veteran cadres, most of whom had gained their initial experience and grown while in the communist Armies, began disappearing from the scene, the need was felt for tightening the CCP’s control and grip over the PLA. This became more pronounced as Party apparatchiks with little or no experience of service in the PLA began entering the Party’s top echelons. The present day statements of senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders, that the “Party must firmly control the gun”, reinforce their view of the need for enhanced political control over the PLA.

The CCP and PLA leadership has identified, with concern, new vulnerabilities in the PLA. As a greater number of better educated personnel and college graduates join the PLA, their potential susceptibility to “hostile” foreign propaganda is considered to be greater. This “hostile” foreign propaganda, which was noticed to have been articulated in the run up to the recently concluded 18th Party Congress by some of the more ‘liberal’ Chinese economists calling for political reform argues that the PLA should be an army of the State and not subservient to the CCP.