Chinese Army Research Articles

The Journalist as Autobiographer

The moment in history is mid-January, 1945. The journalist from Time-Life is in the field with the Chinese army overlooking the junction of the historic road where Burma meets China. To take the last Japanese stronghold, 7,500 foot-high Mount Huilungsham, and reopen the Burma Road, American planes have dropped their tons of napalm, fragmentation, and heavy bombs, and the artillery has pounded away with eight-minute salvos every hour. Between salvos three divisions of American-trained Chinese troops, bayonets fixed, triumphantly storm the crest.

The Army after Mao

Developments in the Chinese army since the death of Mao Zedong have been dominated by two somewhat contradictory features. On the one hand, the military has vigorously asserted its professional interests and has instituted important reforms designed to put the People's Liberation Army (pla)1 on a more professional basis. On the other hand, the demand of military officers for large-scale technological modernization of the armed forces has been rejected, and even the policy of selective re-equipment, which had apparently been agreed upon, has yet to bear fruit. Both features are the product of changes that have occurred in China in the post-Mao period. The death of Mao and the concomitant downfall of his radical supporters now stigmatized as the Gang of Four removed the chief barrier to the expression of professional views by the military. The army's crucial role in the succession struggle and in the consolidation of the new leadership gave the military substantial influence over national policy. This leadership, moreover, shares the military's commitment to professionalism and views its requirements with sympathy and understanding. However, this same leadership is also committed to the accelerated modernization of China and the military is only one of the four main sectors the others being industry, agriculture, and

Origins of the difference in political influence of the soviet and Chinese armies: The officer corps in the civil wars

Origins of the difference in political influence of the soviet and Chinese armies: The officer corps in the civil wars

The Chinese Red Army: Campaigns and Politics since 1949. By Gerard H. Corr. (New York: Schocken Books, 1974. Pp. 192. $8.95.)

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The Chinese Red Army: Campaigns and Politics since 1949. By Gerard H. Corr. (New York: Schocken Books, 1974. Pp. 192. $8.95.)

The Chinese Red Army: Campaigns and Politics since 1949. By Gerard H. Corr. (New York: Schocken Books, 1974. Pp. 192. $8.95.)

The Chinese Red Army.

The Chinese Red Army.

Foreign-Training and China's Self-Strengthening: The Case of Feng-huang-shan, 1864–1873

One of the principal concerns of China's ‘self-strengthening movement’ in the T'ung-chih period (1862–1874) was the question of military reform. Organizational change was not a central issue, for the Ch'ing dynasty had already found in the innovative armies known as yung-ying (lit., ‘brave battalions’) a comparatively effective military system compatible with existing economic and administrative institutions. But changes in training methods—especially officer training—and weapons came to be viewed as essential to the self-strengthening effort. Experience in the huge and devastating Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), together with the repeated humiliations suffered by China at the hands of foreigners in the two decades following the Opium War of 1839–1842, had brought the Ch'ing government to a greater awareness of the need for introducing Western-style weapons and training in Chinese armies. Particularly convincing was the effective use of foreign troops and foreign-officered contingents (such as the vaunted Ever-Victorious Army) against the Taipings in the area of Shanghai during 1862. But in Chinese eyes, the employment of foreign troops and officers could never be anything more than a temporary expedient. Ch'ing policy-makers aimed at eliminating dependence on foreigners as soon as possible, while building China's own military capabilities in order to contend with both internal and external challenges. These twin goals lay at the heart of self-strengthening.

Current Education in the Chinese Army

Current Education in the Chinese Army

Nuclear Blackmail and the End of the Korean War

American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles often bragged about how nuclear brinkmanship by the United States finally brought the other side to agree to negotiated settlement of the Korean War in July 1953. It proved that the threat of massive retaliation could work. Communist bullies who understood the language of force, if no other, could be rendered reasonable by threat of an atomic attack. No attempt has been made to reconcile the tone of this tale of mighty America dictating terms to frightened China with the discordant and well-known reality of such U.S. military unhappiness with the war's outcome that there formed veritable never again club in the U.S. military, while the Chinese army celebrated the exhilarating success of having pushed mighty America from the Yalu River down to the 38th parallel and held the line there. Dulles's view is self-serving and unconvincing. Yet it gained wide and active acceptance. His argument claims that events prove that his policies of a bigger bang for buck work. However, bit of skepticism is proper response to politician praising his own alleged successes. After all, in the extensive debates over theories of deterrence it has often been pointed out that no more than one's own side will the other side readily permit itself to be seen as conceding to gun pointed at its head. The obvious and disastrous consequence of surrendering

Scrub typhus in eastern Taiwan, 1970.

An outbreak of scrub typhus occurred in Chinese Army personnel in the eastern part of Taiwan during 1970. This is the first outbreak of this disease documented on the main island of Taiwan since 1932. Of 21 hospitalized patients examined during the convalescent stage, 19 had antibody titers of from one to 640 to one to 10,240 as measured by indirect immunofluorescence to the Karp, Kato and Gilliam stains of Rickettsia tsutsugamushi. All were males of from 35 to 51 years and all had high fever by history. Eleven patients had eschars, six with typical black necrotic scabs. In addition, serologic evidence of prior scrub typhus infection was found in 59 of 241 other men from the two military companies involved in the outbreak. All men had been working clearing an area in hills 300 to 500 meters high. This land was originally cleared for agricultural use, but had been abandoned over 4 years previously. Rickettsia tsutsugamushi was recovered from rodents and chiggers (Leptotromibidium deliense) captured in the area.

Bhutan's External Relations

FOREIGN POLICY did not pose complex problems for the Government of Bhutan during the first four decades of the 20th century. The basic operating principles of Bhutan's external relations were set by the events surrounding the British Younghusband Expedition into Tibet (I903-5) and the treaty between Bhutan and British India signed in i9io. The political situation in the Himalayan region thereafter allowed little scope for initiative on foreign policy matters by the Bhutanese authorities even if they had been so inclined-which they were not. Geopolitics thus made it inevitable that British India should be the primary focus of Bhutan's foreign policy, based upon the principle of optimal isolation. Except for a brief fling in the I9IO-I2 period, when Chinese armies occupied Tibet and pushed south to the Himalayan frontier, China was in no position to exert any influence in this region. The overthrow of the Ch'ing dynasty in i9ii also signalled the end of China's physical presence in Tibet for more than four decades. Lhasa emerged as a semi-dependency of the British and had to accommodate itself to British hegemony throughout the Himalayan area. In foreign policy terms, then, British India constituted the only potentially complicating factor for the newly-established monarchy in Bhutan in I907, and it is not surprising that Druk Gyalpo (King) Ugyen Dorji made a satisfactory accommodation with the British his first order of business. The response was encouraging as the terms proposed by the British were interpreted by the Bhutan government as the best possible under the circumstances. The British recognized Bhutan's internal sovereignty and did not even insist upon the establishment of a Residency in Bhutan as they had in Nepal and Sikkim. Formally, the British Political Officer in Gangtok was also accredited to Bhutan, but this was a unilateral act on New Delhi's part, never recognized by the Bhutanese authorities. The Political Officer was occasionally allowed to undertake brief tours of Bhutan, but only under carefully circumscribed conditions that denied him the opportunity to exert an undue influence in internal Bhutanese politics. The only qualification imposed on Bhutan's sovereignty was the clause in the i9io treaty under which the Bhutanese agreed to be guided by the advice of the British on foreign policy matters. But in the context of the existing situation this was nothing more than de jure recognition of the de facto reality, for even without this clause

An Incident In Pyongyang

Since I am an old soldier, you will have to indulge me as I tell an occasional war story. In Korea in early December 1950, the troops of the Chinese People's Army were sweeping southward and threatening the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. We had just received a trainload of new M46 tanks. They sat on flat cars in the marshaling yards—like so many great squat toads. They were prizes that must not fall to the enemy. Captain Will Baker of the 57th Tank Recovery Company was given the mission to unload the tanks and transport them south to safety. The northern sector of the city was already coming under enemy fire, and Will was given 24 hours to get them out. (Or the Air Force would be called in to blast them into uselessness.) At about 6 PM, soon after Captain Baker received the order, he rushed up and

The Chinese Army after the Cultural Revolution: the Effects of Intervention

Whatever may have been the objectives of the principal participants in the Cultural Revolution, there can be little doubt that they did not include what turned out to be, at least in the short term, the most striking and significant outcome of the upheaval: the rise of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to a pivotal position in China's power structure. Compelled to intervene in the political process when the disruptive effects of the struggle reached dangerous dimensions, the army gradually ascended to the commanding heights of political power in the provinces, and acquired a substantial voice in the policy-making councils of Peking. When the Ninth Congress of the Party finally met in April 1969 to write the epilogue to the Cultural Revolution, it was the PLA rather than the Party that held most of the key positions of power in China.

Nunc Dimittis

Dr. Tong Chi Lin, Pathologist with the Livestock and Poultry Commission, Little Rock, Arkansas, died on August 4, 1972.He was born in Canton, China, on December 25, 1921. In 1942 he enrolled in the Veterinary College of the Chinese Army, receiving a D.V.M. degree in 1947. He served for three years in the Veterinary Corps of the Chinese Army, and, upon discharge in 1950, became the Senior Veterinary Officer of the Yang-Ming-Shan District, Taiwan. From 1955 to 1959 he was on the faculty of the College of Agriculture, National Taiwan University, as Senior Veterinarian of the College Veterinary Hospital in charge of the Surgical Section, and as Instructor in the Department of Veterinary Science, he taught anatomy and surgery.He received leave of absence from 1959 to 1961 and received a M.S. degree from the University of California, Davis, specializing in comparative pathology. Upon return to Taiwan, he was .

The Peiyang Army, Yüan Shih-k'ai and the Origins of Modern Chinese Warlordism

The Peiyang Army was the most significant military development in China between the Hsiang and Huai Armies which suppressed the Taiping and Nien rebellions in the 1860's and the army that Chiang Kai-shek raised and employed in the northern expedition of 1926–27. The Peiyang was the first Chinese army to be comparatively modern in training and discipline as well as in weaponry. Formed for the most part by Yuan Shih-k'ai while he was governor-general of Chihli province from 1901 to 1907, the Peiyang Army grew to six divisions of about 10,000 men each. Size alone gave the army a major role in politics during the last decade of the Ch'ing dynasty and the early years of the Republic.

China-watching in Hongkong

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn GittingsJohn Gittings: Formerly of the Royal Institute of International Relations, London, and the Institute of International Relations, Santiago, currently with the Contemporary China Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; author of The Role of the Chinese Army, Survey of the Sino-Soviet Dispute, and other works.

Editor's Note

Kuan Feng's article "A Study of Sun Tzu's Philosophical Thought on the Military" won him an influential position in ideological circles in the Chinese Communist Party. It has been circulated for study in the Chinese Red Army. Again studying an ancient thinker from a materialist and dialectical point of view, Kuan Feng has made a clear and penetrating analysis of Sun Tzu's military philosophy and its relation to other schools of thought such as Lao Tzu's. Thus a subsequent discussion on Lao Tzu in this issue will help to locate fundamental ideas which Kuan and other Marxist-oriented philosophers in China hold to be valuable.

The Soviet Military and The Communist Party, by Roman Kolkowicz; The Role of the Chinese Army, by John Gittings

The Soviet Military and The Communist Party, <i>by Roman Kolkowicz</i>; The Role of the Chinese Army, <i>by John Gittings</i>

Far Eastern Affairs. Number Four. Edited by G. F. Hudson. (St Anthony's Papers, No. 20.) Oxford University Press: London, 1967. Pp. 117, plates, 30s. - World Migration in Modern Times. Edited by Franklin D. Scott. Prentice-Hall International: Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968. Pp. 177, maps, 50s (paperback 25s). - The Chinese Communist Army in Action: The Korean War and its

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Peking and Hanoi: Anatomy of a Revolutionary Partnership

No single diplomatic relationship in the world has a longer historical tradition behind it than that between the current Chinese and North Vietnamese states. One Chinese anthropologist has even speculated that the word viet of Vietnam, originally meaning halberd or spear, may have stood for the name of a people resident in China about thirty-five centuries ago.1 At least it is certain that two thousand years ago, while Julius Caesar and his successors were incorporating the British Isles into the Roman world, Chinese armies were conquering the ancestors of the modern Vietnamese people, who then lived in the Red River delta of northern Vietnam, and incorporating them into the early Chinese empire. From the first century ad to the tenth century ad northern Vietnam was a Chinese province. And over this span of nine hundred years the Vietnamese people received a most comprehensive initiation into the scholarship, political theories, familial organization patterns, bureaucratic practices, and even the religious orientations of Chinese culture. Only in the tenth century, when the Tang empire dissolved, did the Vietnamese people break away from China and form their own kingdom with their own dynasties. After the tenth century this kingdom expanded south from the Red River delta to the Gulf of Siam. Yet until the Sino-French war of the 1880s, Vietnamese courts, like Korean courts, formally considered themselves the diplomatic vassals of the Chinese emperor.