part0016

In September 1980, the General Staff Department (GSD) convened a month-long meeting of senior officers to discuss how to counter an attack by the Soviet Union. The meeting’s purpose was to determine what principles should guide PLA operations during the initial phase of such a war. At the end of the meeting, the CMC approved a new strategic guideline known simply as “active defense.” In contrast to the existing strategic guideline, which stressed luring the enemy in deep, the new strategy called for the PLA to resist a Soviet invasion and prevent a Soviet breakthrough using a forward defense anchored around positional warfare.

The adoption of the 1980 strategic guideline, which represents the second of the three major changes in China’s military strategy, is puzzling. China had faced a clear military threat from the Soviet Union for over a decade. In 1966, the Soviet Union signed a defense treaty with Mongolia and began to increase the number of troops deployed along China’s northern border. Following the March 1969 clash between Chinese and Soviet forces at Zhenbao (Damansky) Island, the Soviet threat continued to grow, with fifty divisions facing China by 1979. Nevertheless, despite this threat, China did not adopt a new military strategy until 1980. The onset of the Soviet military threat alone did not prompt China to change its military strategy.

Apart from the Soviet threat, two other factors are central to understanding when, why, and how China changed its military strategy in 1980. First, an important motivation was an assessment of a significant shift in the conduct of warfare that would characterize Soviet operations in an invasion of China. This assessment was based on observations of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, in which clients of the United States and the Soviet Union employed advanced weapons in new ways. PLA strategists such as Su Yu and Song Shilun, among others, believed that a significant shift in the conduct of warfare had occurred that would place China in an even more disadvantageous position should conflict erupt with the Soviet Union. The content of the 1980 strategic guideline reflected an effort to counter a Soviet threat that would be characterized by new ways of warfare.

Second, a split at the highest levels of the CCP prevented the PLA from responding to the Soviet threat. Throughout the Cultural Revolution, the CCP elite was fractured, as different groups competed for power. After Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, the party lacked a clear consensus on the structure of authority. Hua Guofeng, who was anointed as Mao’s successor months before Mao’s death, held the top positions in the party, state, and military. After Deng Xiaoping returned to work in 1977, he would spend the next few years displacing Hua and consolidating his position as China’s paramount leader. After party unity was restored, the PLA was able to pursue a major change in strategy.

The adoption of the 1980 strategic guideline is illuminating for several reasons. Previously, Western analysts have often described China’s strategy during this period as “people’s war under modern conditions,” which implies continuity with Maoist approaches. 1 Although some senior officers used this phrase in their speeches, it was not part of the formulation of the new strategy. Instead, it only reflected the view that any war with the Soviet Union on China’s territory would be a protracted one, given the gap in Soviet and Chinese capabilities. The phrase did not describe how such a war would be waged or what forces would be required. Following the death of Mao, references to people’s war also likely maintained superficial ideological continuity, despite the significant changes in operations in the new guideline that rejected Mao’s idea of luring the enemy in deep.

The examination of the 1980 strategic guideline also clarifies the relationship between China’s military strategy and the “strategic transformation” in army building that was announced along with the reduction of one million soldiers in 1985. The strategic transformation did not signal the adoption of a new military strategy. Instead, it refers to Deng Xiaoping’s judgment that China would not face a total war for one or two decades and thus could shift from a “war footing” posture to peacetime military modernization. Moreover, the 1985 force reduction represents the continuation of downsizings in 1980 and 1982 to improve the quality and effectiveness of the force under the 1980 strategy. The strategic transformation did not outline what kind of wars the PLA should prepare to fight or how it should prepare to fight them.

This chapter unfolds in seven parts. The first section demonstrates that the strategic guideline adopted in 1980 represents a major change in China’s military strategy. The next section shows that senior military officers perceived a significant shift in the conduct of warfare, which served as the external stimulus for the adoption of a new strategy in addition to the Soviet threat. As the third section demonstrates, however, the PLA’s high command could only act on these shifts in the conduct of warfare once political unity after Mao’s death had been restored following Deng’s consolidation of political power in 1979 and 1980. The next two sections examine the adoption and implementation of the new strategy, while the final two sections review the 1985 downsizing and adoption of the 1988 strategic guideline.

The strategic guideline adopted during the September 1980 meeting of senior officers represents the second major change in China’s military strategy since 1949. The 1980 guideline, known simply as “active defense,” outlined a strategy to counter a Soviet invasion and prevent a strategic breakthrough. It represented a clear rejection of the existing strategy from the mid-1960s based on luring the enemy in deep and strategic retreat. Instead, similar to the 1956 strategy, the 1980 strategic guideline envisioned a forward defense that would be based on positional warfare and supplemented by small-scale mobile warfare. Such a strategy required that the PLA develop the ability to conduct combined arms operations to coordinate tank, artillery, and infantry units, deployed in a layered defensive network of fixed positions.

In the 1980 strategic guideline, the “basis of preparations for military struggle” was a surprise attack by the Soviet Union. The primary strategic direction was China’s northern border, also known as the “three norths” or the area from Heilongjiang province in the east to Xinjiang in the west. 2 Following the 1969 clash with the Soviets over Zhenbao Island, the situation on China’s northern border deteriorated, raising the prospect of a major war with Moscow. 3 Although the major Soviet attack that China’s leaders had feared in the fall of 1969 did not occur, the Soviet military threat grew throughout the decade. By 1979, the number of Soviet divisions along China’s northern border had increased from thirty-one to fifty. 4 Concerns about Soviet intentions intensified when Moscow signed a defense treaty with Vietnam in November 1978 and invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Chinese strategists believed that a Soviet attack would involve tank columns conducting rapid, deep strikes, along with airborne operations in rear areas, to seek a swift and decisive victory. 5

The 1980 strategy was a strategy of strategic defense. It described how China would respond once the Soviet Union had invaded. The core of the 1980 strategy was a forward defense of China’s northern border, especially potential invasion routes through Zhangjiakou or Jiayuguan, to prevent any strategic breakthrough and buy time for a nationwide mobilization. Afterward, the strategy called for combining the defense of strategic interior lines with offensive campaigns and operations on exterior lines to create a stalemate. Finally, if the effective strength of the invading force was sufficiently weakened, the PLA would shift to a strategic counterattack. 6 Although the new strategy altered how China would respond to an invasion, it remained based on waging a protracted war with the Soviet Union. A forward defense, rather than retreat, was viewed as key to victory in such a conflict.

The 1980 strategy excluded preempting a Soviet attack. The PLA lacked any credible means to launch strikes beyond its borders. Consistent with the principle of “gaining control by striking afterwards” or counterattacking ( houfa zhiren ), China would use force only after a Soviet invasion had started. In the initial phase, the role of offensive operations would be limited to small-scale mobile operations from fixed positions, especially along Soviet flanks. Once a strategic stalemate had occurred, offensive operations would play a central role in expelling the invading force. The role of nuclear weapons, which China now possessed, was also limited to defensive uses. Despite the potential of using nuclear weapons as a form of “invasion insurance,” China’s strategy envisioned their use only in response to a nuclear attack on China, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons by the Soviets. Although China researched the neutron bomb in the early 1980s, it did not ultimately decide to develop and deploy such weapons, nor did it alter its approach to nuclear weapons under the 1980 strategic guideline. 7

A key component of any strategic guideline is the identification of the “form of operations” that the PLA should be prepared to conduct in the future. In contrast to the centrality of mobile and guerrilla warfare in luring the enemy in deep, the 1980 strategy identified positional warfare as the main form of operations for the PLA or “positional warfare of fixed defense” (jianshou fangyu de zhendizhan ). 8 By rejecting luring in deep as the basis for China’s strategy, senior military officers downplayed the role of mobile warfare at the strategic level. Instead, the 1980 guideline envisioned creating a layered, in-depth network of defensive positions, each of which an invader would need to destroy.

The “basic guiding thought for operations” was the way in which positional, mobile, and guerrilla warfare would be combined. In the initial phase of a war, positional warfare would occur in forward areas between China’s main population areas and its international frontiers. The new strategic guideline limited the role of mobile warfare to small and medium-sized offensive operations close to the defensive positions that the PLA would try to hold. Nevertheless, the main goal of the strategy was to resist a Soviet attack as long as possible, to create a stalemate and buy time to mobilize forces. 9 Guerrilla warfare would be limited to those areas that China would be unable to defend in the initial phase of a war, such as parts of Xinjiang.

Successful positional warfare required developing combined arms capabilities for both defensive and offensive operations. Although the 1956 strategic guideline envisioned creating such a capability, this goal was never achieved because of Mao’s decision to pursue luring the enemy in deep and its emphasis on the dispersion of forces and independent operations. China’s 1979 invasion of Vietnam revealed the PLA’s inability to conduct combined arms operations, even though the war itself was not a primary factor in the adoption of the new strategy. 10 To develop such a capability, the PLA started to draft the “third generation” of combat regulations in 1982, which were finished in 1987. 11 Similarly, the drafting of the Science of Campaigns Outline , the PLA’s first text on the operational level of war, restarted in the early 1980s and was published in 1987, along with the first edition of the Science of Military Strategy . 12

The 1980 strategic guideline required China to develop a more nimble and effective force. When the strategy was adopted, the PLA had roughly six million soldiers. As early as 1975, Deng Xiaoping as chief of the general staff had criticized the PLA as “bloated” because of the rapid growth in the number of officers and noncombat troops in the late 1960s. Following the adoption of the 1980 strategic guideline, three major force reductions were undertaken to improve the flexibility of command and overall effectiveness of the force while also reducing the defense burden on a national economy now focused on reform and opening. The first two reductions occurred in 1980 and 1982, in which roughly two million soldiers were cut. Planning for the third reduction of one million troops began in early 1984 and was announced in June 1985, bringing the total size of the force to 3.2 million when it was completed in 1987. 13 The 1985 reduction was part of a much broader reorganization of the force, including the consolidation of eleven military regions into seven and the transformation of thirty-five armies into twenty-four combined arms group armies in addition to the reduction and streamlining of headquarters and command departments. 14

Changes in force structure were also pursued to enhance the PLA’s ability to conduct combined arms operations. One of the topics discussed at the 1980 seminar to adopt the new strategic guideline was the importance of creating a “combined force” ( hecheng jundui ) that would be able to conduct combined arms operations. The PLA decided to experiment with transforming armies into combined arms group armies composed of infantry, artillery, tank, rocket, and antiaircraft artillery units. These would be used as a mobile reserve force ( yubei dui ) that would be deployed in the direction of the Soviet attack to prevent a breakthrough. In early 1981, the CMC decided to form two units on a trial basis. 15 Pilot units were created in 1983 and by 1985 all armies ( jun ) had been converted into combined arms group armies as part of the 1985 force reduction.

All aspects of education and training changed under the 1980 strategic guideline. In October 1980, the general departments issued a sweeping plan to reopen and revitalize military academies, which had ceased to function effectively during the Cultural Revolution and were ill suited to training soldiers to conduct the complex military operations that the new strategy required. 16 In November 1980, the PLA held an army-wide training meeting, which identified “coordinated operations” (xietong zuozhan )— essentially combined arms operations—as the focus for future training of the force. 17 In February 1981, the GSD issued a new training program that provided a new framework for all aspects of training, with an emphasis on combined arms operations. 18

Along with changes to education, the PLA increased the scope and tempo of military exercises. The renewed emphasis on exercises and training was symbolized by an exercise held in the Beijing Military Region in September 1981. Dubbed the “802” meeting, it represented the PLA’s largest exercise since 1949 and involved more than 110,000 troops from eight divisions. The purpose was to explore defensive operations during the initial phase of a Soviet invasion and thereby “concretize the strategic guideline.” 19 Afterward, other military regions as well as the services began to hold larger and more realistic exercises, in stark contrast to the 1970s, when small-scale exercises were held sporadically, if at all, reflecting a much higher degree of professionalism with the force.

Throughout the 1970s, China faced a clear and growing threat from the Soviets, but did not alter its military strategy of luring the enemy in deep for a decade. Nevertheless, by the mid-1970s, senior PLA officers began to reconsider China’s approach for countering the Soviet threat and to advocate for changing China’s military strategy. These assessments were based on shifts in the conduct of warfare that were seen as characterizing how the Soviets would fight, especially the increased speed and lethality of modern military operations involving armored forces and airpower .

Su Yu, the chief of staff from the 1950s, was the earliest and most prominent advocate for changing China’s strategy. In 1972, after the death of Lin Biao, Su Yu had returned from working in the State Council on government affairs to serve as the commissar and party secretary of the Academy of Military Science (AMS). Su was worried. From his perspective, the PLA in the Cultural Revolution had failed to study how to fight future wars and ignored foreign technological developments that would influence warfighting. Instead, as Su’s biography notes, “it was as if the abstract slogan of people’s war could solve all problems.” 20 In a series of reports to party and military leaders, Su assessed China’s military strategy and critiqued the focus on luring the enemy in deep.

Su spent almost a year drafting his initial report on how China should fight a future war. Drafting was difficult, as he held many views that were “obviously different from dominant views within the party and army.” 21 Entitled “Operational Guidance in Future Anti-Aggression Wars,” Su submitted the report to Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Ye Jianying in February 1973. 22 A second report, “Several Issues in Future Anti-Aggression Wars,” was given to top party leaders and the CMC in late December 1974 and subsequently distributed to all Politburo members in Beijing in January 1975. 23 Because these reports were authored by a senior officer with Su’s prestige and authority on strategy, and distributed at the highest levels in the party and the PLA, they offer insight into changing views of the conduct of warfare.

The 1973 report contained the basic ideas that Su would develop throughout the rest of the decade. The clear implication is that the PLA’s existing strategy was ill suited to the threat that China faced from the Soviet Union, which was characterized by vast armored forces with unprecedented firepower and mobility along with air power. Although Su Yu blamed Lin Biao for the PLA’s current shortcomings, he was really critiquing Mao’s 1964 strategic guideline, which Lin had implemented. 24 Su argued that China’s troops were too dispersed, which would weaken their effectiveness, strength, and ability to conduct maneuver operations, placing China in a passive position. 25 More controversially, he questioned the primacy of mobile warfare by suggesting that some cities and key strategic points ( yaodian ) “must be resolutely defended tenaciously” and that even “some must be defended to the death [s ishou ].” 26 Su stressed that “there should be sufficient understanding” of the importance of positional defensive operations, which relied on fixed fortifications to blunt assaults. 27 He also challenged luring the enemy in deep by highlighting the importance of operations on open plains and around transportation nodes, rather than just retreating to mountainous areas. Specifically, he suggested that such operations would require an in-depth deployment of forces ( zongshen peizhi ) along with the construction of anti-tank obstacles and improved use of artillery to destroy invading armored forces. He also underscored the importance of denying the Soviets air control by strengthening China’s air defenses.

By 1975, Su Yu believed a fundamental shift in the conduct of warfare had occurred. In a lecture on anti-tank warfare, Su stated that “future wars will be unlike those” against Japan, the Nationalists, or the United States. 28 He stressed that the Soviet Union’s advanced weaponry, especially its tanks and armored vehicles, could not be destroyed using the PLA’s traditional methods of “gouging eyes” (throwing grenades through sight openings) and “cutting ears” (crawling on tanks to remove the antenna). 29 Although not always explicit, Su’s concern was not just with Soviet intentions, but rather the Soviet Union’s advanced weaponry and new operational methods.

For military professionals around the world, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War marked a turning point in modern military operations. A key question is whether this conflict influenced China’s assessments of the Soviet military threat, given the prominence of Soviet weaponry and tactics in the Egyptian and Syrian armed forces. When the 1973 Arab-Israeli War occurred, the PLA’s research institutes were only beginning to resume normal operations. 30 Documents from the period are extremely limited. Nevertheless, available sources suggest that the war informed China’s assessments of the Soviet threat.

In January 1974, the GSD dispatched a delegation to Egypt and Syria to study the conflict. The seven-person delegation was headed by Ma Suzheng, the deputy commander of the engineering corps, and spent two weeks in the region as guests of the Egyptian and Syrian militaries. When the delegation returned in February, Ma briefed the leadership of the general departments and authored a report on the war. He noted that anti-tank and antiair operations were the “main defining features of the conflict” and “the tactics of the two sides basically reflected the operational thought of the Soviet Union and United States.” 31 Importantly, he stressed, “the experience and lessons of the October War were beneficial for our army’s preparation for war against foreign aggression.” 32 Ma’s report, along with materials on the war from the Egyptian and Syrian militaries, were approved for wide distribution within the PLA, “attracting attention from leaders at all levels.” 33

Ma’s report and related materials almost certainly informed Su Yu’s analysis. Su’s reports are consistent with the characteristics of this conflict, especially the focus on the speed and lethality of armored assaults, the role of anti-tank weapons, and the importance of achieving or denying air superiority. These same features of the 1973 war were highlighted in a 1975 article in the Liberation Army Daily , which also suggests that the lessons of the war were widely discussed within the PLA. The article notes that the war was characterized by the use of multiple offensives to achieve frontal breakthroughs, the role of large numbers of tanks in these offensives, the effectiveness of anti-tank weapons, the struggle for air superiority and the success of Egypt’s air defenses, the use of US and Soviet weaponry, and the rapid consumption or expenditure of equipment. 34

Despite Su’s reports, China did not change its military strategy. In fact, during a rare plenary meeting (quanti huiyi ) of the CMC held in December 1977, the CMC instead affirmed and formalized Mao’s strategy from the mid-1960s, calling it “active defense, luring the enemy in deep.” This plenary meeting was the first meeting of the PLA high command after the death of Mao and arrest of the Gang of Four, following the election of a new CMC at the Eleventh Party Congress in August 1977. At the meeting, Ye Jianying, CMC vice-chairman in charge of daily affairs, called for “carrying out Chairman Mao’s strategic thought and completing war preparations.” Ye repeated the basic tenets of Mao’s strategy, affirming that “the basic method is annihilating the enemy through movement [zai yundong zhong ],” that the strategic guideline was “active defense, luring the enemy in deep,” and to “be rooted in fighting an early, major and nuclear war.” 35

Nevertheless, some senior military officers did call for a change in strategy. At the 1977 plenary meeting, Song Shilun, the president of AMS, argued that luring the enemy in deep should be dropped as part of China’s strategic guideline, stating it was “inadvisable.” 36 In January 1978, Su Yu submitted a report to Xu Xiangqian, head of the CMC’s strategy commission, that also rejected a strategy based on luring in deep and outlined a strategy of forward defense. 37 Su highlighted the importance of building fortifications, using strategic reserves to conduct counterattacks, and increasing the importance of positional warfare. His report, discussed in more detail below, was then circulated to the CMC vice-chairmen, including Deng Xiaoping, and within the GSD.

The 1977 plenary meeting most likely maintained luring the enemy in deep as a temporary measure. Senior military officers understood the need to rebuild an armed force that had been ravaged by the Cultural Revolution. Although Mao had changed China’s strategy to luring in deep in 1964, it had never been adopted formally by the PLA. Thus, as Ye Jianying noted at the plenary meeting, one imperative for the PLA after the Cultural Revolution was “to unify operational thought,” a prerequisite for consolidating and rebuilding the force as a whole. 38 By emphasizing Mao and the existing strategy, Ye invoked a leader whom all in the PLA could support and attributed the PLA’s deficiencies to Lin Biao and the Gang of Four. 39 Similarly, as Deng said at the meeting, “without a clear strategic guideline, many matters cannot be handled well.” 40 For these reasons, one general recalls that the 1977 strategic guideline “played an important role in promoting army-building and war preparations after the smashing of the Gang of Four.” 41 Raising the question of changing military strategy so soon after Mao’s death would have invited broader reexamination of his legacy that the party and the PLA were not yet ready to undertake, especially given the divisions among the top party leaders over the structure of authority. Mao also still enjoyed a great deal of admiration among the PLA’s grassroots, who joined the force during the Cultural Revolution.

In early 1978, Su Yu continued his challenge of luring the enemy in deep. His 1978 report to Xu Xiangqian, discussed above, was entitled “Several Opinions on Strategy and Tactics in the Initial Phase of a War.” 42 Su observed that “whether the initial phase of the war is fought well will have a significant relationship on the development of the entire course of the war.” 43 He then stressed the importance of identifying key defensive points (fangshou yaodian ) and increasing the size of the reserve forces in the center of the country. Again challenging the existing strategy, he believed that “the initial phase of future wars will be different when compared with many past wars.” 44 For example, “the proportion of defensive positions [zhendi shoubei ] should be increased and our army’s positional warfare capability must be raised” to resist waves of armored and artillery attacks. 45 Foreshadowing a focus on combined arms, Su called for infantry, armored, engineering, and air forces as well as the militias to create a “tight anti-tank firepower network [huowang ]” with long, medium and short ranges. 46

In April 1978, Su Yu repeated similar themes in a lecture at AMS. 47 Given the speed and range of the Soviet Union’s heavy weapons, Su concluded that “our operational methods, ways, and means must also change and even must be transformed.” 48 The PLA needed to employ more troops in defensive operations, limit mobile operations at the start of the war to supporting defensive operations, and avoid decisive battles in which the poorly equipped PLA forces would suffer heavy losses. In the civil war, Su said, “we generally used mobile defense,” but this required gradual retreats that would now require abandoning cities that he believed should be defended to the death, given their importance for China’s ability to mobilize its population for a longer war. Su grounded his arguments in shifts in the conduct of warfare, and repeatedly referred to “the rapid development of modern science and technology and its extensive use in the military.” For Su, this “inevitably will lead to changes and even a transformation in operational methods, raising a new series of problems for war preparations [ zhanzheng zhunbei ].” 49

Su Yu’s challenge to China’s existing strategy gained much wider exposure in January 1979, when he was invited to lecture at the PLA’s Military Academy and the CCP’s Central Party School. He examined “solving operational problems under modern conditions,” or how to deal with the Soviet threat based on the shifts in the conduct of warfare. 50 Importantly, he delivered his talk shortly before China’s invasion of Vietnam the following month. Although China’s poor performance in this conflict may have created an additional impetus for military reforms, Su’s views on shifts in the conduct of warfare as a reason to change strategy were formed well before China’s invasion and whatever lessons might have been learned on the battlefield. 51

He began with the observation that advances in science and technology heralded a new stage in the development of weapons, equipment, and war-fighting methods. According to Su, “these changes challenge some of our army’s traditional operational arts and urgently demand that our army develop our strategy and tactics.” Otherwise, “as soon as the enemy launches a large-scale war of aggression, we may not be able to adapt to the requirements of the circumstances of the war and may even pay much too high a price.” 52 The Soviet and US militaries were dominated by heavy weapons that were “armored, fast, powerful, and long range.” For this reason, Su argued, “the destructive power and lethality of modern conventional weapons are unmatched in the past,” and would play a key role in warfare especially in a war with its northern neighbor. 53 As he quipped, “Even if you make a lot of noise using bullets and grenades against tanks, you cannot destroy the tanks.” 54

For China, the main challenge in a war with the Soviet Union would be countering a surprise attack. Soviet military theory viewed the opening phase of the war as decisive, determining whether a rapid victory could be achieved. 55 Soviet advantages in weaponry would allow them to rapidly strike China’s strategic political, economic, and military centers, and thus paralyze China’s “defensive system” and destroy its ability to resist. The key issue was “resisting the first few waves of the enemy’s strategic surprise attack” while maintaining the PLA’s effective strength and avoiding concentrating forces and decisive battles. 56

Su’s answer, consistent with his previous writings, contradicted the existing strategy by emphasizing positional warfare over mobile warfare. As Su said, “An important difference with the past is that positional defensive warfare has clearly grown in importance.” 57 Mobile warfare should be restricted to areas near fixed positions and medium-sized battles in prepared positions behind the front line. “Under modern warfare conditions,” he said, “at the beginning of the war, the main feature of the form of operations will be positional operations [ zhendi de zuozhan ] and operations not far from these positions.” 58 Although mobile warfare had been the mainstay of PLA offensive campaigns in the Korean War, he stated that it emphasized mobility without taking rear areas into consideration that would now be critical in mobilizing the nation. As Su noted, “In the past, we would attack if we could win, and flee if we could not, but now whether or not we can win or lose, there is a still a problem whether or not we can get away.” Thus, “if we copy that way of fighting from the revolution, it would not be pragmatic.” 59 Instead, “the situation of future wars of anti-aggression was different” because China would need to defend key fortifications ( zhongdian shefang ) and garrison areas, including key cities, islands and coastal areas as well as other strategic areas. 60 Although some areas could be abandoned, others the PLA must “defend to the death.” For Su, some cities not only needed to be held, but also could be used like Stalingrad as an opportunity to weaken the enemy.

Su Yu’s speech received a great deal of publicity. A Xinhua reporter attended the meeting and introduced its basic ideas to a wider audience. 61 The GSD organized staff to listen to recordings of the lecture. By March, seventy percent of cadres in the GSD had heard the speech. 62 The lecture was published in an internal AMS journal, Military Arts , in March 1979 and then in the widely circulated Liberation Army Daily newspaper on May 15, 1979, sparking vigorous debate and discussion. 63 The CMC also instructed that Su’s speech be distributed as required reading for all senior cadre in the army, which indicated high-level approval of the contents of his lecture. 64

That summer and fall, many senior officers publicly endorsed Su’s ideas and called for a new strategy. In October 1979, for example, Xu Xiangqian, one of the PLA’s ten marshals, published a lengthy article on defense modernization in Red Flag , a publication under the Central Committee, that linked changes in the conduct of warfare with questions of strategy. Xu noted how the application of new technologies to military affairs was “causing great changes in weaponry and equipment.” Furthermore, “these changes will inevitably lead to corresponding changes in operational methods.” For Xu, “modern warfare is very different from any war in the past.” In a war with the Soviet Union, for example, “the target of attack, scale of war, and even method of fighting are something we have not encountered before. We must study and solve a number of new problems according to these new conditions.” Rejecting Maoist ideas, Xu said that “if we view and command a modern war with the old vision of the 1930s and the 1940s, we are bound to be rebuffed and suffer great hardships in a future war.” 65 The clear implication of Xu’s remarks was that China needed a new strategy.

Over the following year, Military Arts published articles supporting Su’s position, including many by senior officers. 66 In November 1979, for example, Yang Dezhi endorsed Su Yu’s ideas about the importance of defensive operations and positional warfare. Yang would replace Deng Xiaoping as chief of the general staff in March 1980. Yang observed that the CMC had already determined China’s strategic guideline, but acknowledged that issues remained regarding “how to better understand and implement the guideline”—a not so subtle way of saying that the guideline should be revised. More bluntly, he said the core issue was whether to “resist the enemy’s strategic breakthrough” or “carry out luring the enemy in deep.” 67 He then argued for emphasizing positional warfare and for improving coordination among the services and combat arms as the key to success. 6 8

Many commentaries on Su’s speech in Military Arts used the 1973 Arab-Israeli War as an important example. In a January 1980 speech at AMS, for example, Song Shilun repeatedly referred to the 1973 war when describing the characteristics of modern warfare, such as the high consumption of weaponry and the importance of strategic surprise. 69 Similarly, when commenting on how to revise a draft of the Science of Campaigns in August 1980, Song instructed that researchers at AMS should “appropriately borrow from the campaign operational experience of foreign armies, especially the operational experience of the Fourth Middle East War.” 70 The Science of Campaigns was to serve as a guide for how to conduct campaigns and thus should “strive to reflect operational characteristics under modern conditions.” 71

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War had also become an important reference point for training. A report from the Shenyang Military Region in late 1978, for example, notes that the war was used as the main case study ( zhanli ) for anti-tank operations. 72 In 1979, the war featured prominently in anti-tank training in the Beijing Military Region. 73 In 1981, a study group at an army in the Nanjing Military Region was established to study surprise attacks in the opening phase of a war. The group used three books, including one entitled The Fourth Middle East War . 74 Most likely, similar study groups were formed in other military regions. Likewise, in 1985, AMS published a translation of a Japanese study of the Arab-Israeli wars. The preface written by AMS stated that “in the history of warfare to this day, the Fourth Middle East War is the one war that prominently reflects modern characteristics.” 75

Although senior PLA officers recognized by 1978 that China needed to change its military strategy, a new strategic guideline was not adopted until October 1980. The main obstacle was the disunity in the highest levels of the party, created by the politics of the Cultural Revolution, that continued even after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The restoration of party unity required that a new consensus be reached on the structure of power and authority within the party, which was achieved when Deng Xiaoping defeated Hua Guofeng in a struggle to become China’s top leader.

When Mao Zedong died in September 1976, four contending elite groups or factions existed. The “leftists” were radicals unleashed by Mao to rectify revisionism he believed had taken root in the party, who controlled propaganda and education, among other areas. The most prominent members of this group were the so-called “Gang of Four,” although they had not always operated as a unitary group in the Cultural Revolution. 76 The “beneficiaries” were those party elites whose careers had prospered during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution and found themselves in elevated positions of power after more senior leaders were persecuted. The veteran “survivors” included those older members of the party who largely avoided being purged, either because they had been protected by Mao or Zhou or because they successfully navigated the ever-changing politics of the time. Waiting in the wings, however, was a fourth group: the “victims” or members of the old guard who held senior positions before 1966 and had then been persecuted. These individuals were often associated with more pragmatic and less radical policies before the Cultural Revolution and had held important positions in the party, state, and military. They most likely resented the beneficiaries, who often occupied posts that they had vacated, but also possessed the bureaucratic skills and extensive connections within the party that would be needed to rebuild the country when the Cultural Revolution ended. 77

To varying degrees, the Cultural Revolution created divisions within the party, state, and military. When Zhou Enlai died, the position of premier of the State Council became vacant for the first time since 1949. Mao appointed Hua Guofeng, a beneficiary, to replace Zhou because a leftist would have lacked support from other senior leaders. As first vice-premier throughout 1975, Deng Xiaoping would have been Zhou’s logical successor. Deng, however, had fallen out of favor with Mao at the end of 1975 and would be stripped again of his positions in April 1976. When Hua became premier, he was also named as the first vice-chairman of the CCP, indicating that he had become Mao’s chosen successor. 78

When Mao died in September 1976, the positions of party chairman and CMC chairman became vacant. An alliance formed between veteran survivors, led by Ye Jianying, and the beneficiaries, such as Hua Guofeng. Following a series of moves by the Gang of Four to consolidate power immediately after Mao’s death, the leading survivors and beneficiaries agreed to the arrest of the “gang” and their key supporters, thus rejecting a radical vision for the future of the party and eliminating one group contending for power. 79 The Politburo named Hua as the chairman of both the CCP and the CMC. Hua thus became the first political leader since 1949 to hold the top positions in the party, state, and military.

Hua’s formal titles, however, exceeded his informal authority and status within the party. After the arrest of the Gang of Four, the Politburo Standing Committee had only two members: Hua (chair) and Ye Jianying (vice-chairman). A new Politburo Standing Committee would need to be formed, which required convening a party congress. When the Eleventh Party Congress was finally held in August 1977, almost a year later, new leadership bodies were formed but they reflected an unstable balance among beneficiaries, survivors, and victims. Hua remained chairman of the CCP and thus chairman of the Politburo Standing Committee. Wang Dongxing, another beneficiary who played an instrumental role in the arrest of the gang, was named as vice-chairman of the party in addition to running the powerful central office of the CCP. Two survivors joined the new Politburo Standing Committee: Ye Jianying, who had been in charge of the PLA’s daily affairs, and Li Xiannian, one of Zhou Enlai’s economic advisors. The final member, Deng Xiaoping, represented the aspirations of the many victims.

Deng’s return to work in 1977 required delicate negotiations between the beneficiaries and veteran survivors. Wang Dongxing and Wu De, the mayor of Beijing and another beneficiary, opposed Deng’s return. But many others supported it, especially given the need to address widely acknowledged problems in the military. Deng wrote in a disingenuous letter in May 1977 that he accepted Hua’s leadership of the party. 80 In July 1977, Deng assumed all the positions he had held in 1975—vice-chairman of the party, vice-chairman of the CMC, vice-premier, and chief of the general staff. By resuming positions in all three pillars of power, Deng also posed a clear threat to Hua Guofeng. The disunity within the highest levels of the party was reflected in the official ranking of Politburo members: Hua a beneficiary ranked first, Ye a survivor second, and Deng a victim third. 81

Although the top party leadership remained divided, the new CMC formed after the Eleventh Party Congress was more favorable to Deng than any other leader. Hua remained chairman, with Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Liu Bocheng, Xu Xiangqian, and Nie Rongzhen as vice-chairmen. All but Hua were military professionals who had been involved in the PLA’s modernization since the 1950s. The nucleus of the new CMC was its standing committee ( changwei ), which had eight members and would serve as the CMC’s principal decision-making body. Only one member of this committee, Wang Dongxing, had strong ties to Hua. 82 The new CMC also had forty-three additional members, including the leadership of the three general departments, services and branches, military regions, and other units under the CMC. Thus, the CMC, like the PLA itself, was both bloated and fragmented, unable to take quick or resolute decisions.

Starting August 1977, Deng waged a steady campaign to consolidate power within the CCP. Following the arrest of the Gang of Four, the struggle for power occurred mainly between the beneficiaries around Hua Guofeng and the return of victims around Deng. In addition, within the lower ranks of the party and military, many beneficiaries and leftists remained, both of which could be mobilized by top party leaders and underscored the fragility at the top of the party. In this contest, Hua had two advantages. He held the top positions in the three institutional pillars of power, while also having been blessed by Mao with legitimacy as the chairman’s chosen successor. 83 Hua’s status as Mao’s successor, however, also linked him to any reevaluation of the Cultural Revolution, which would touch on Mao’s responsibility for what had occurred. 84 Deng ranked lower in the party, state, and military hierarchies, but nevertheless held senior positions in each, along with years of experience at the highest levels of policymaking from the founding of the PRC, which Hua lacked. Deng was especially powerful within the PLA, not just because of his historical ties with many of the top leaders on the CMC, but also by serving as a vice-chairman of the CMC and as chief of the general staff. Deng represented the aspirations of many others, inside and outside the military, who had been persecuted by the leftists and resented the beneficiaries.

As new research on Chinese elite politics demonstrates, the contest between Deng and Hua did not reflect underlying differences over policy or ideology. Deng and Hua surprisingly agreed on many policy issues, especially economic ones. 85 Where they likely disagreed would concern the future of the party, the evaluation of the Cultural Revolution, and, most important, the structure of power at the top of the party. 86 The struggle between Hua and Deng will not be recounted in detail here. 87 For the purposes of explaining major change in China’s military strategy, the most important element of the struggle was the outcome—namely, the consolidation of authority and restoration of unity within the party under one leader, Deng Xiaoping.

Deng consolidated power over the next year and a half, roughly in two phases. In the first phase, which culminated in the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Party Congress in December 1978, Hua Guofeng and other beneficiaries were significantly weakened. As Joseph Torigian shows in exciting new research, Deng exploited Hua’s political vulnerability as Mao’s successor by promoting a debate over “practice is the sole criterion for judging truth,” which questioned the utility of Maoist ideas under the slogan of the “two whatevers.” a As Torigian concludes, “Deng had artificially manufactured an ideological debate he could turn into a political debate.” 88 By the fall of 1978, most provinces and key military units had all expressed support for Deng’s position on “seeking truth.” 89

The turning point in Hua’s weakening occurred at a central work conference that was held in November 1978. The purpose of the conference was to discuss economic policy that would be ratified at the Third Plenum the following month. Nevertheless, almost as soon as the conference started, participants quickly changed the agenda to discuss reversing the verdicts of victims of the Cultural Revolution as well as those who had been implicated in the April 5, 1976, “Tiananmen Incident” that Hua had so far refused to reverse. 90 Although not the first to speak out, the most senior member of the party to raise these issues early in the meeting was Chen Yun, who called for the rehabilitation of veteran party members who had been criticized (including himself).

Chen Yun insisted that the reversal of verdicts must be addressed before tackling policy issues such as the economy. In the end, Hua Guofeng acceded to the demands Chen and others raised on reversing verdicts and adding victimized revolutionaries to the Politburo. 91 Many of Hua’s supporters, such as Wang Dongxing, Wu De, Chen Xilian, and Ji Dengkui, performed self-criticisms for maintaining “leftist” positions associated with the Cultural Revolution. When the Third Plenum was held in mid-December, it confirmed the reversal of verdicts, placing more supporters of Deng on the Politburo. Wang Dongxing was removed from his positions as party vice-chairman and as director of the Central Committee’s general office. Chen Yun replaced Wang as party vice-chairman and also joined the Politburo Standing Committee.

By this time, Deng had begun to exercise the authority of a paramount leader. Deng altered work assignments for those on the Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee, actions normally reserved for the party chairman, such as Hua. 92 Even before the work conference had started, Deng oversaw the negotiations for the normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States and pushed for a punitive attack on Vietnam in February 1979 for Hanoi’s alignment with Moscow and invasion of Cambodia. 93 Previously, only Mao (or Zhou with Mao’s approval) would have handled high-level diplomatic negotiations or decisions regarding the use of force. Hua Guofeng played little or no role in these decisions.

After the Third Plenum, Deng continued to consolidate power in the party, state, and military. In November 1979, the Central Committee approved the CMC’s establishment of an “office meeting” ( bangong huiyi ) that would be responsible for managing daily affairs. 94 This executive body was packed with Deng supporters. 95 In January 1980, more Deng loyalists were added to the CMC Standing Committee. 96 Between January and April 1980, the leadership of several military regions was reshuffled. Commanders in all but two of the eleven military regions were replaced. In many cases, the reshuffling occurred because existing commanders were tapped for promotion into higher positions. 97 Like other major leadership changes within the PLA’s military regions, however, the rotation of commanders may have also been intended to prevent the “mountaintops” or factions that arise when one commander serves in the same region for a long period of time. The reshuffling allowed for the promotion of younger commanders—a long-standing goal of Deng’s. Many of those promoted had also been persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and none of them had strong ties with Hua Guofeng. Finally, the ability to execute the reshuffling was also a sign of Deng’s consolidation of power within the PLA. 98 No evidence exists that Hua was involved in these changes.

Deng’s consolidation of power within the military presaged his move against Hua Guofeng in the party and state bureaucracies. At the Fifth Plenum, in February 1980, four members of the Politburo Standing Committee close to Hua Guofeng were removed, while Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang were added. b The balance on the standing committee now favored Deng. Hu Yaobang was named as general secretary of the CCP, which placed him in charge of party affairs. Zhao Ziyang assumed responsibility for the daily work of the State Council and would officially replace Hua Guofeng as premier in August. 99 Although Hua would remain party chairman and CMC chairman for a few more months, he had been effectively sidelined from the party and state bureaucracies. In December, at a series of Politburo meetings, Hua relinquished these last two positions, a decision that would be formalized at the Sixth Plenum in June 1981. 100

This restoration of party unity created conditions for changing China’s military strategy. By the end of 1979, a consensus had emerged on the need to resist a Soviet invasion through a forward defense and not a strategic retreat. Now, the PLA’s leadership could act on that consensus. The decision to formulate a new strategic guideline was made in the spring and summer of 1980 and the new strategy was adopted in October 1980. The decision to adopt the new strategy demonstrates how senior military officers led the process of strategic change.

The move to change strategy began when Deng Xiaoping decided to step down as chief of the general staff in early 1980 to focus on economic and party affairs. Yang Dezhi, the commander of the Kunming Military Region who had led Chinese forces on the Kunming front in China’s 1979 invasion of Vietnam, replaced Deng. By this point, most members of the CMC along with the leadership of the three general departments could be described as “modernizers” focused on military affairs and not politics. Within the GSD, Yang Dezhi’s deputies were Yang Yong, Zhang Zhen, Wu Xiuquan, He Zhengwen, Liu Huaqing, and Chi Haotian.

Yang’s first task as chief of the general staff was to develop a plan to streamline and reorganize ( jingjian zhengbian ) the force. This had been raised at the 1975 enlarged meeting of the CMC, but only limited progress was achieved following Deng’s removal from office in 1976 and continued divisions within the party and PLA. Although 800,000 troops had been cut by the end of 1976, mostly from the ground forces, the size of the PLA grew again in the late 1970s, reaching 6,024,000 in 1979. 101 Streamlining and reorganization became the focus of an enlarged meeting of the CMC held in March 1980, as discussed in more detail below.

Yang’s second task was to formalize the consensus around China’s military strategy, specifically the PLA’s “operational guiding thought” during the initial phase of a war with the Soviet Union. The first downsizing would need to be informed by an overarching vision for how the PLA should be organized and the operations that it would be required to execute. More important, a gap formed between the emerging consensus following the open publication of Su Yu’s 1979 lecture and the existing strategic guideline of “active defense, luring the enemy in deep.” Su’s emphasis on positional warfare contradicted the concept of strategic retreat in the existing strategy. If the PLA was going to emphasize positional warfare, the CMC would need to revise the strategic guideline. The speed with which Su’s ideas were embraced by the high command after his 1979 speech and the gap with the existing guideline indicated the need to “unify thought” ( tongyi sixiang ) on strategy and operations.

Several military regions had already started to implement Su Yu’s ideas even though the strategic guideline had not yet been changed. In October 1979, for example, the Shenyang Military Region conducted a division-level exercise of positional defensive operations under nuclear conditions that was consistent with a greater emphasis on defending fixed positions following an initial attack. 102 In March 1980, the Shenyang Military Region held a training session that used Su’s speech as the basis for evaluating the region’s objectives and training plans. 103 In March 1980, the GSD and Wuhan Military Region instructed the 127th Division to conduct pilot training to improve coordination ( xietong ) to strengthen positional defense against an attacking enemy—the very kind of operations that Su had urged the PLA to emphasize. 104

Shortly after replacing Deng, Yang Dezhi chaired several meetings to discuss the international situation and the PLA’s operational guiding thought in a war with the Soviet Union. Based on these discussions, Yang proposed to the CMC on May 3 that the GSD convene a seminar ( yanjiuban ) for senior officers on operations in the initial period of an “anti-aggression” war. 105 As he would later note, such a seminar for top officers was unprecedented. 106 The purpose of the meeting was to raise the “strategic awareness” ( zhanlue yishi ) of senior officers and discuss how to respond strategically to a Soviet attack. 107 The broader goal was to change the strategic guideline, as the PLA could not answer the question of how it should respond to a Soviet attack without describing what kind of military strategy China should have. To maintain secrecy, the seminar was codenamed the “801” meeting. 108

The CMC agreed with Yang Dezhi’s proposal and placed him in charge of a leading small group to organize the seminar. Zhang Zhen served as head of the group’s office and was put in charge of day-to-day planning. Yang and his deputies agreed that the first issue to decide was the “correct expression” ( zhengque biaoshu ) of the strategic guideline “to unify the thinking of the whole army.” 109 The purpose of the seminar would be to discuss how to change China’s military strategy in the context of a war with the Soviet Union. In describing the work of the leading small group, for example, Zhang Zhen refers on multiple occasions to revising the guideline. 110

In the beginning of June, Yang Dezhi and Yang Yong, the first deputy chief of the general staff, spent one month conducting an inspection tour of Inner Mongolia, the Hexi Corridor and Helan Mountains, all different areas that would be on the frontline in any war with the Soviets. The trip’s purpose was to inspect the combat readiness training, defensive fortifications, and terrain where an invasion might occur. Underscoring the importance of the trip, they were accompanied by leaders of the Beijing and Lanzhou Military Regions. 111 As Yang Dezhi would say several months later, “We discovered many problems.” 112 As shown in map 5.1 , three potential Soviet invasion routes had been identified in the early 1970s. 113 The route from Erenhot to Beijing through Zhangjiakou was the shortest and most threatening.

In the middle of June, Zhang Zhen began to prepare a series of lectures that would form a core part of the seminar. These lectures involved leaders from fifteen units and departments to study how to employ the services and branches in the initial phase of a war. Topics included how a breakthrough in a campaign could evolve into a strategic breakthrough, the coordination among the services and branches, command automation, electronic countermeasures, air defenses, and wartime mobilization, among others. Lectures also covered the operational characteristics of World War II and “several wars that recently occurred in the world,” presumably including the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. 114 To avoid “empty talk,” all speakers held practice lectures ( shijiang ) that the small group supervised. 115

By the middle of August, preparations for the seminar were complete. At some point during this process, the leading small group decided that the strategic guideline should be changed and that “luring the enemy in deep” should be removed as part of the formula or expression of the guideline. Zhang Zhen, for example, recalls discussions with Yang Dezhi and Yang Yong in which they agreed on how to change the guideline, though he does not state exactly when these conversations occurred. 116 The leading small group solicited the opinions on changing the strategic guideline from the CMC’s strategy commission and “relevant leading cadre.” 117 According to Zhang Zhen, “Everyone favored [ qingxiangyu ] making a partial adjustment to the strategic guideline.” 11 8

Between mid-August and the start of the seminar on September 17, the leading small group consulted with the old marshals and vice-chairmen of the CMC to seek their approval for the change in strategy. Nie Rongzhen, Ye Jianying, and Xu Xiangqian all agreed with the proposed revision of the guideline, pending CMC approval. 119 On September 30, the leading small group briefed Deng Xiaoping, who “clearly affirmed our views” and stated that he wanted to address the seminar. 120 The CMC approved the change in the guideline during the seminar. 121

On September 9, Song Shilun, the president of AMS, sent a letter to Ye Jianying, one of the CMC’s vice-chairmen. Song argued forcefully for dropping luring in deep from the strategic guideline because “it cannot be a strategic guideline to unify the overall war situation.” Instead, it “can only be a kind of operational method under certain conditions, in certain strategic or campaign directions in a certain period of time.” 122 The relationship between Song’s letter and the deliberations of the leading small group is unclear. 123 Nevertheless, the old marshals endorsed Song’s letter, and they agreed that luring the enemy in deep should be dropped from China’s strategic guideline, as the leading small group had proposed. 124

The army-wide senior officer’s seminar on defensive operations, or the “801” meeting, began on September 17 and lasted for one month. More than one hundred senior officers gathered at the Jingxi Hotel in Beijing, including from the CMC, general departments, military regions, services, branches, and other departments. 125 The rostrum included the CMC secretary Geng Biao, Yang Dezhi, the GSD’s leadership, and the CMC’s advisors (guwen ). The purpose of the meeting was to focus on global strategic trends, the assessment of a foreign invasion, the strategic guideline, operational guiding thought, and the PLA’s strategic tasks (zhanlue renwu ) in the initial phase of the war. 126

In his opening remarks, Yang acknowledged how party disunity had hampered the development of military strategy. “Regarding operational thought,” he said, “the interference and destruction of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four cannot be underestimated. Therefore, for a long period of time, conditions have not existed to unify operational thought.” 127 Yang outlined the goals of the meetings as “studying and researching operational issues in the initial phase of an anti-aggression war, deepening understanding of the CMC’s strategic guideline, unifying operational thought, and further implementing all combat readiness work [ zhanbei gongzuo ].” 128 Later in the seminar, Yang Dezhi gave another speech in which he outlined the central role that positional warfare should play in China’s new strategy and operations for dealing with a Soviet invasion. 129

At the time, open criticism of Mao, especially on military affairs, remained sensitive. When the seminar was held, the party had not yet reached its official judgment of Mao, which would be contained in the June 1981 resolution on party history. Toward this end, AMS under Song Shilun’s direction attempted to gather all statements made by Mao on luring the enemy in deep. Song concluded that even when Mao had used the term, most of the time it was in the context of campaigns and tactics, not at the strategic level. The only time it was used at the strategic level, apart from in the mid-1960s, was during the Red Army period in the 1930s. 130 Therefore, Song and others argued that dropping luring the enemy in deep as a strategic concept was not inconsistent with much of what Mao had said, thereby creating ideological space for rejecting the existing strategy based on one of Mao’s foundational ideas. Moreover, Song cleverly argued that the concept of active defense included the idea of luring the enemy in deep at the operational level. 131 These ideological gymnastics supported the abandonment of strategic retreat in favor of positional warfare.

At the conclusion of the seminar, Deng Xiaoping and Ye Jianying addressed the participants to endorse the change in strategy. In his straightforward style, Deng said, “For our future anti-aggression war, what guideline should we adopt after all? I approve these four characters—‘active defense.’ ” 132 Ye Jianying concurred, “During this discussion everyone advocates for ‘active defense’ … I agree with everyone’s opinion.” 133 Yang Dezhi summarized what the meeting had accomplished. For him, it “basically unified understanding of the CMC’s strategic guideline, further clarified strategic guiding thought and strategic tasks in initial phase of a future war, [improved] understanding of the situation of the services and branches, and strengthened the concept of combined operations [ hecheng zuozhan ].” 134 In other words, it changed China’s military strategy.

Shifts in the conduct of warfare featured prominently in discussions at the seminar. According to one account, the participants concluded that “today’s war is completely different from yesterday’s war.” 135 Moreover, “the adversary in future war was changing, weapons and equipment and ways of war [ zhanzheng fangshi ] were changing, making people dumbfounded.” 136

In his remarks at the end of the seminar, Ye Jianying underscored the role of shifts in the conduct of warfare. He told the participants that “our military thought must develop with changes in warfare.” Specifically, “fighting conventional wars will be different than in the past.” For Ye, “when a battle starts in the future, the enemy may come together from the sky, land and sea; the difference between front and rear is small. This will be an unprecedented three-dimensional war [ liti zhan ], combined war [ hetong zhan ], and total war [ zongti zhan ].” He then drew on the example of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War to illustrate how the conduct of warfare had changed and the challenge that now China faced:

When Egypt fought Israel in the Middle East war, in addition to air combat, it was mainly fighting tanks and tanks countering tanks. Ground operations had to deal with the enemy’s airborne and helicopter landings. This is not the same as how we used to fight. As for us, many aspects are also different from the past, with more special forces and heavy weapons and equipment, which is not the same as the past millet plus rifles. As the force becomes more modern, it also relies more on logistics and the organization of logistics expands. These changes between the enemy and ourselves inevitably create new problems and characteristics in future wars. 137

From an operational perspective, these shifts in the conduct of warfare indicated that the Soviet Union would be able to conduct deep and rapid strikes. If China did not try to stop, delay, or slow these strikes, the results would be devastating. Beijing, for example, was only about 380 miles from China’s border with Mongolia. Moreover, strategic retreat would likely require relinquishing these urban areas without a fight. Top officers agreed that, under these conditions, failure to resist a Soviet attack would have dire consequences. The Soviets would either be able to achieve a rapid victory if not resisted or, in a larger war, it would be able to seize cities and other industrial areas that would not only weaken national morale but also degrade China’s war potential and ability to mobilize to counterattack. Song Shilun went even further, noting that luring the enemy in deep was inconsistent with development in the types of wars since World War II. For Song, these included limited wars to seize some territory, proxy wars, and wars of quick decision ( suda sujue ). As Song wrote, “Luring the enemy in deep is not appropriate for all types of wars,” as a strategic retreat in a limited war effectively allowed the enemy to achieve its war aims without fighting or paying a price. 138

The 1980 strategic guideline is also associated with a shift in China’s naval strategy from “near-coast defense” (or coastal defense) to “near-seas defense” ( jinhai fangyu , or offshore defense). Under the former, the PLAN focused on deterring or preventing an amphibious assault and securing the Chinese coast. With the latter, however, the purpose was broader—to also defend the waters adjacent to China. Deng Xiaoping raised the prospect of such a change in April 1979, when, in a meeting with PLAN Commander Ye Fei, Deng stressed “near-seas operations.” 139 In July 1979, Deng told the PLAN’s party committee that “our strategy is near-seas operations [ jinhai zuozhan ].” Deng’s main concern was countering the “powerful navy” of a hegemon, presumably the Soviet Union. 140 In this way, the extension of the PLAN’s area of operations was consistent with pursuing a forward defense along the land border. When discussing the PLAN’s streamlining and reorganization as part of the 1982 downsizing (discussed below), the CMC stated that the requirements of “near-seas defense” should guide the PLAN’s reorganization, which perhaps marks the first time that the term describing the new strategy was used. 141

In August 1982, Liu Huaqing, then a deputy chief of the general staff, replaced Ye Fei as PLAN commander. Beginning in 1983, Liu started to flesh out the content of near-seas defense as the PLAN’s service strategy. The near seas are the seas adjacent to China’s coast, including the Yellow, East China, and South China Seas and the waters east of Taiwan. In January 1986, the PLAN’s party committee adopted a naval strategy under the slogan of “active defense, near-seas defense,” demonstrating a clear link to the 1980 strategy. 142 The next month, Liu Huaqing and the PLAN commissar submitted a report to the CMC requesting permission to adopt a naval strategy of near-seas defense. 143 In Liu’s vision, near-seas defense emphasized realizing Taiwan’s unification, defending territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and deterring attacks from the sea. Key tasks in wartime would be coordinating with the army and air force to defend China against attacks from the sea and to protect sea-lines of communication. These tasks required being able to seize and retain command of the sea for a period of time, to control sea routes connected with the near seas, and even to be able to fight in adjacent waters. 144 As Bernard Cole has observed, much of what Liu outlined was aspirational at the time, but Liu’s legacy played an important role in the 1990s and 2000s with the shift in China’s overall military strategy from total wars to local wars. 145

Was the 1980 strategy adopted in response to the PLA’s poor performance in its February 1979 invasion of Vietnam? China invaded Vietnam to punish Hanoi for its November 1978 defense treaty with the Soviet Union and then Vietnam’s December 1978 invasion of Cambodia. China also sought to signal its resolve to resist the Soviet Union, who had deployed fifty divisions along China’s northern border. China’s military objective was to seize several provincial capitals and communications nodes, especially Lang Son, in order to demonstrate China’s ability to occupy Hanoi. Afterward, China would withdraw. 146

The invasion began on February 17, 1979. China mobilized between 330,000 and 400,000 soldiers from nine armies ( jun ) against 50,000 to 150,000 Vietnamese soldiers. 147 China did achieve its military objectives when it seized Lang Son on March 4 and then announced its intent to withdraw its forces, which was completed on March 16. Despite possessing a significant numerical advantage, China paid a high price for these limited gains, with 7,915 killed and another 23,298 wounded. 148 Moreover, Chinese forces advanced much more slowly than they had anticipated. Lang Son is only fifteen to twenty kilometers from the border but required sixteen days to capture. Thus, the invasion revealed significant deficiencies in the PLA’s combat effectiveness when compared with its last major offensive operations in the Korean War against an even stronger adversary. 149 The reasons for the PLA’s poor performance have been described elsewhere, but they include poor leadership and coordination at the tactical level created by the large numbers of new soldiers and cadres with little or no military training along with the organizational upheaval of expanding units to bring them to full strength in a short period of time. 150 More generally, the PLA’s poor performance reflected the decline in readiness and training during the Cultural Revolution, when the PLA focused on garrison duties, local governance, and sideline production, as described in the previous chapter.

However, China’s poor performance in the war was not a primary factor in the decision to adopt a new military strategy in October 1980. First, although the PLA high command may have hoped that sheer numerical superiority would have produced a rapid victory in 1979, they were well aware of the PLA’s many problems. In June 1975, Deng had described the PLA as “swollen, scattered, arrogant, extravagant, and lazy.” 151 In December 1977, the CMC affirmed Mao’s “active defense, luring the enemy in deep” to stabilize the force internally in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution while restarting military training. Even the invasion itself was postponed for a month after the PLA leadership conducted an inspection tour that uncovered significant deficiencies. 152 The commander of Chinese forces on the western front, Yang Dezhi, would even be promoted to replace Deng as the chief of staff a year later. Nevertheless, the force may have performed even more poorly than senior military officers had expected, and, in this way, the war may have further emphasized the importance of improving the quality of the force that was part of the 1980 strategy, especially the emphasis on military training.

Second, senior military officers advocated for China to change its military strategy well before the February 1979 invasion. As described earlier, Su Yu and Song Shilun both pushed to change China’s strategy during and after the December 1977 CMC meeting that reaffirmed luring in deep. Su Yu’s now famous lecture on how to deal with a Soviet invasion was delivered in early January 1979, a month before the invasion. More than any other single event, the content of Su’s lecture played a clear and direct role in the content of the 1980 strategy. The lecture summarized arguments and ideas that he had developed over the past five years and was not a response to how the PLA might perform in the pending attack.

Third, available sources on the adoption of the 1980 strategy contain few references to the PLA’s poor performance in 1979. The senior officer seminar in September and October 1980 focused on how to counter what was the greatest threat to China (a Soviet attack), how such an attack would occur, how China should respond, and whether luring the enemy in deep remained the best approach. The 1979 war may have been discussed, but does not appear to have been prominent. Planning and preparations for the meeting from May to August 1980 also contain no references to the war in available sources. The PLA did conduct a critical self-assessment of its performance, but it appears to have focused on tactical proficiency and political work. 153

Finally, the 1979 invasion was not the type of conflict that might prompt the PLA to reconsider its approach to defending against an invasion by a much stronger enemy. From China’s point of view, the 1979 invasion was a limited war, intended to teach Vietnam “a lesson.” Many of the challenges the PLA encountered in the war were exacerbated by the requirements of conducting large-scale offensive operations that had not been executed for decades. The goal of the new strategy, however, was to slow or halt an invasion. If anything, Vietnam’s defense against the invasion may have been more enlightening for the PLA as it considered the Soviet threat.

The PLA began to implement the new strategy almost immediately. New combat regulations and a campaign outline were drafted, three million troops were cut and the force reorganized, and military education and training were revitalized. The implementation of the 1980 strategic guideline not only underscores that it constituted a major change in China’s military strategy, but also that the organizational changes to implement the strategy were consistent with the factors that prompted the change in the first place—a significant shift in the conduct of warfare, amid concerns about the Soviet threat.

Consistent with a major change in strategy, the PLA initiated substantial revisions to its operational doctrine. In 1982, the PLA began to draft the “third generation” of combat regulations. The previous generation of combat regulations had been issued on only a trial basis between 1975 and 1979 and had taken almost a decade to write due to the Cultural Revolution. As one Chinese military scholar describes, “The content of the [second generation] combat regulations ‘gave prominence to politics.’ ” 154 The drafting of the third generation of combat regulations, therefore, constituted “a restoration period,” given the absence of operational doctrine during the Cultural Revolution. 155 In an effort to improve standardization of operational doctrine, the CMC established a review group headed by Han Huaizhi, a deputy chief of staff, to examine the regulations for combined arms and infantry operations along with the Science of Campaigns Outline (zhanyixue gangyao ) that AMS was drafting. 15 6

More than thirty regulations were issued as part of the third generation of combat regulations. These included general regulations along with sixteen regulations for the ground forces, ten for the navy, five for the air force, and four for the rocket force. For the first time, they bore the signature of the CMC chairman, indicating the importance attached to their promulgation. 157 The Liberation Army Daily described the new regulations as “correctly implementing the CMC’s strategic guideline of active defense” and “absorbing the experiences of recent local wars in the world and our counterattack in self-defense against Vietnam.” 158 At the level of strategic guidance, an authoritative textbook notes that these regulations reflected the shift from luring in deep to active defense, or the 1980 strategic guideline. 159

Importantly, following the lessons of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, these new combat regulations were also the first to stress the operational level of war. New regulations were drafted for combined arms operations for ground forces and related branches and for the services. Infantry regulations were issued in 1985 and combined arms regulations were issued in 1987. As part of the combat regulations, the CMC also approved the promulgation of the PLA’s first campaign-level document, the Science of Campaigns Outline . 160 One source describes this as “carrying legal status” ( daiyou faguixing ), placing it on par with the combat regulations. 161 Song Shilun began drafting the document in the early 1960s at AMS, as part of the 1956 strategic guideline, but it was delayed repeatedly by the Cultural Revolution. Although drafting restarted in 1976, Song appears to have jettisoned that draft after the Third Plenum, suggesting that it was too heavily influenced by the politics of the Cultural Revolution. 162 Song restarted the revision process again in August 1980, focusing specifically on basic campaign principles and, especially, combined arms operations. 163 He completed a preliminary draft in November 1981 and distributed it to units and military academies for comment. The CMC approved the campaign outline in 1986, which the GSD distributed in August 1987. 164

Finally, the PLA published its first Science of Military Strategy . This book provided the first comprehensive account of China’s military strategy and outlined in detail how China planned to resist a Soviet invasion. 165 Although the book was not published until 1987, drafting began in 1982, again supervised by Song Shilun at AMS. 166 Following the general spirit of the concept of active defense, the book divided a war with the Soviets into three phases that still reflected Mao’s approach to total war. The first stage is the strategic defense, where the initial surprise attack by an opponent is countered using a combination of offensive and defensive operations to blunt the force of the attack. Positional warfare was key at this stage. The second stage is the strategic counterattack, where offensive operations are launched once the enemy’s offensive has been stalled. The third and final stage is the strategic offensive once the enemy has been weakened and conditions have been created for a decisive battle to end the war. 16 7

Implementation of the new strategy required a significant reduction in the size of the force. Reducing the size of the PLA had been featured prominently in the June 1975 enlarged meeting of the CMC that symbolized Deng’s initial return to power before the end of the Cultural Revolution. 168 Yet, because of continuing party disunity, the 1975 downsizing fell far short of its original goal, cutting only thirteen percent of the force and not twenty-six, as originally planned. 169 Amid the struggle for power between Deng and Hua and China’s 1979 invasion of Vietnam, the force grew again. By 1980, the PLA had more than six million soldiers, erasing all the gains of the previous downsizing. 170 Almost half of these soldiers were noncombat troops working in headquarters or logistic or support units, along with a surplus of officers. 171

To create a more effective and modern force as envisioned in the new strategy, the PLA engaged in three force reductions, described as “streamlining and reorganizing” ( jingjian zhengbian ), in 1980, 1982, and 1985. By 1987, the size of the PLA had been halved, to roughly 3.2 million soldiers. As the 1985 downsizing is associated with Deng Xiaoping’s assessment that the probability of a major war had declined significantly, enabling a “strategic transformation” from a war footing to peacetime modernization, it will be discussed separately. Nevertheless, it represents the continuation and culmination of efforts to reorganize the force that began in 1980.

Although the new strategy was a key element in the decision to reduce the force, other factors influenced the decision. Deng’s reform and opening policy required reducing the defense burden on the budget. In 1979, defense expenditures accounted for 17.4 percent of government spending. 172 Economic reforms and the shift from plan to market would not succeed if defense spending was not also reduced.

The 1980 downsizing was first raised during a meeting of the CMC’s standing committee in March 1980. As Deng stated, “One of our greatest problems is that the army is obese [ yongzhong ].” The bloated force not only put great pressure on the national budget, but also reduced effectiveness by preventing flexibility in command. In 1979, for example, the Ninety-Third Regiment had five deputy commanders and seven or eight deputy chiefs of staff. 173 Deng concluded that “it will be impossible to increase combat power efficiency without trimming the fat [ xiaozhong ].” 174 The CMC concurred, noting that “the current system of the military’s structure and establishment [ tizhi bianzhi ] was not suited to the requirement of modern operations.” 175 Therefore, “reforms must be carried out.” 176

Although planning for the 1980 downsizing started before the 1980 strategic guideline had been formally approved, its goals were consistent with the rationale for changing strategy. The main reason was to create a more capable and modern force, based on the view that China’s current force and command structure was ill suited for fighting a more powerful adversary that could conduct rapid and deep strikes on Chinese territory. 177 By July 1980, the CMC approved the GSD’s plan, which was published in August, and called for cutting 1.5 million soldiers by “streamlining administration [ jiguan ], decreasing the personnel quota, and reducing support and noncombat personnel.” 178 The CMC instructed the GSD to start the downsizing in the fourth quarter of 1980 and basically complete it by the end of 1981. Noncombat personnel included internal security forces, railway and engineering troops, logistics and support units, communications units, and units in the three general departments and directly under the CMC. Combat units were also targeted by dividing infantry divisions into full-strength and reduced-strength units, which could be expanded in wartime. To promote modernization, the reduction in cadres also sought to promote talented younger officers. 179

The 1980 reduction did not achieve its goal, but a significant reduction occurred in a short period of time. Overall, 830,000 soldiers were cut from the force, reducing it to 5,189,000. 180 Among the three general departments and other units under the CMC, 45,200 or 13.8 percent of personnel were cut. This included significant reductions to the GSD (46.45 percent), GPD (14.86 percent), and GLD (25 percent), as well as units such as AMS and the CMC’s general office. 181 The ground forces shrunk by 17.6 percent, while the navy and the air force were cut by 8.5 and 6.4 percent, respectively. 182 Finally, the railway corps and engineering corps were cut by 48 percent (200,000) and 30 percent (156,000). 183 The PLA’s share of the national budget fell from 17.4 percent in 1979 to 14.8 percent in 1981.

In late 1981, planning began for the second round of reforms, which mirrored structural reforms ( tizhi gaige ) of the party and state bureaucracies. The goal was to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization while also mobilizing funds to pursue the “four modernizations” and economic development. In November 1981, the GSD requested permission from the CMC to form a “structural reform, downsizing and restructuring” leading small group, which was established in February 1982 and included leaders from all three general departments. 184 The CMC asked the GSD itself to develop a plan for reforming the three general departments to “destroy temples, move Buddhas, and reduce personnel.” 185 This round of downsizing focused on the organization of combat forces to improve combined arms operations and operational effectiveness, such as the proportion of soldiers among the three services, the number of divisions in the ground forces, the establishment ( shezhi ) of the provincial and subprovincial military districts, the size of the academies, and the organization ( jianzhi ) of the engineering corps, among other topics. 186

On September 16, 1982, the CMC announced the new force reduction plan. The main principles were “reforming the structure and organization, strengthening centralized and unified command, reducing numbers, raising quality, and improving combat effectiveness.” 187 When completed at the end of 1983, the PLA was reduced by almost one million soldiers to 4,238,000, focusing on three areas. 188 First, the branches were reorganized. When the armored, artillery and engineering corps were formed in the early 1950s, they were placed directly under the CMC, not the GSD, to facilitate their development as new branches. However, this structure hindered the integration of the force and the development of combined arms operations. Thus, the armored, artillery, and engineering corps leadership offices were downsized and placed as departments under the GSD. Corresponding units in the military regions were downsized and placed under the headquarters of each military region and under army leadership. 189 Second, the three general departments were also reduced significantly, primarily by eliminating or merging bureaus and departments. The GSD shrunk by another 19.6 percent, while the GDP and GLD were cut a further 20.4 and 19.2 percent, respectively. 190 Third, the remainder of the railway corps was transferred to the Ministry of Railways, while the basic engineering units were transferred to local governments, civilianizing parts of the force. 191 Overall, the reductions included eliminating five military region-level units, twenty-one army-level units, and twenty-eight division-level units along with eight corps-level departments, four army-level departments, and 161 division-level departments. 192 Units within the headquarters, political departments and logistics departments of each military region were merged. 193 The military’s share of the national budget fell to 10.6 percent by 1984.

Two other important changes to force structure occurred at this time. First, the CMC decided to reinstitute a system of military ranks within the PLA (that had been abolished in 1965). Although the process would not be completed until 1987, it was linked with planning for the 1982 downsizing. 194 Second, the PLA began to transform China’s ground forces from armies ( jun ) to combined arms group armies ( hecheng jituanjun ). The CMC first discussed creating such units in 1980. In March 1981, Deng Xiaoping approved the creation of two experimental combined arms group armies, one each in the Beijing and Shenyang Military Regions. 195 Deng again expressed his support for the shift to combined arms at the “802” meeting in September 1981 discussed below, calling on the PLA to “strive to achieve the operational capability for combat arms coordination under modern conditions.” 196 In September 1982, the Beijing and Shenyang Military Regions began to plan the formation of these experimental units, which began in 1983. 197 The two units chosen were the Thirty-Eighth Army in the Beijing Military Region and the Thirty-Ninth Army in the Shenyang Military Region.

In addition, the discussions held during this time proposed other potentially far-reaching reforms. Although they were not ultimately pursued, they reflect the focus on improving efficiency and effectiveness through reorganization of the PLA. The first was the creation of a joint logistics system ( lianqin ), while the second was the creation of a separate ground forces department. 198 The PLA eventually adopted these reforms in 2007 and 2016, respectively.

Zhang Zhen, deputy chief of the general staff for training, led the effort within the GSD to overhaul training. Following an inspection tour of the Nanjing Military Region in May 1980, Zhang concluded that “the state of our army’s academies and schools is very ill-suited to the requirements of national defense modernization and future anti-aggression wars.” 199 Education and training had been one of the areas most seriously damaged during the Cultural Revolution. The content of the curriculum and the amount of time devoted to political education were vulnerable to changes in the prevailing political line. After the antidogmatism campaign in the 1950s, many officers did not want to be associated with academies. By 1969, the majority of academies were closed, effectively halting professional military training. Although they gradually reopened in the mid- to late 1970s, education emphasized political and not military learning.

After the adoption of the 1980 strategic guideline, the PLA launched three significant training reforms. To start, from October 20 to November 7, 1980, the PLA convened an army-wide meeting on military academies. The last such meeting had occurred sixteen years earlier, in 1964, just before the Cultural Revolution. More than 450 senior officers attended, including the deputy commanders and deputy commissars from the military regions, branches, and other units under the CMC, as well as the commandants and commissars of all 188 PLA academies. 200 The meeting examined how to adjust training tasks ( renwu ) and how to reorganize ( tiaozheng ) the military educational system to improve the PLA’s ability to wage modern warfare. The meeting approved seven documents, which were then jointly issued army-wide by the three general departments. These documents formed a blueprint for comprehensive reforms and were described as “a strategic step for preparing to wage war.” 201 To underscore the importance that the CMC now attached to military education within the PLA, education at the academies was formally incorporated into the promotion system for all officers. 202

In addition, in November 1980, the PLA held an army-wide meeting on training. The meeting was held in Luoyang, Henan province, home to the 43rd Army in the Wuhan Military Region. In March 1980, the GSD tasked the 127th Division under the command of Zhang Wannian to conduct a pilot program on methods and training for coordinated operations. 203 The meeting’s purpose was to examine the results of the pilot program to improve the ability of units within the PLA to conduct coordinated operations. Although the PLA had all the main combat arms of a modern force, such as tank and artillery units, it lacked the ability to coordinate their operations effectively. The 1979 invasion of Vietnam demonstrated that coordination was the “weak link.” 204 As Zhang Zhen said at the meeting, “A high level of coordinated operations capability is an objective requirement of modern warfare.” Moreover, such a capability was necessary “to raise our army’s combat effectiveness and adapt to the requirements of future anti-aggression wars.” 205 Zhang lamented that “some comrades” did not know how to deploy or utilize their troops and equipment. 206 The meeting discussed how to improve coordinated training through annual training plans.

Finally, the PLA issued a new training program. Drafting began in July 1980 and the GSD issued it army-wide in February 1981. 207 The goal was to increase the PLA’s “operational capability under modern conditions.” Furthermore, the program was drafted “according to the CMC’s strategic guideline and operational guiding thought, and starting from the requirements of future anti-aggression wars.” 208 Reflecting the desire to downplay politics, Zhang suggested that military affairs account for seventy percent of training under the program, while political education and culture compromise twenty and ten percent, respectively. 209 Following the November 1980 army-wide training meeting, the new training program emphasized combined arms operations at the campaign and tactical levels. Zhang again underscored that combined arms operations reflected the essence of modern warfare and the PLA’s performance in Vietnam demonstrated its shortcomings in this area. 210

These moves, however, only marked the start of an effort to reform education under the new strategy. Another army-wide conference on military academies was held in 1983 “to increase further self-defensive capabilities under modern warfare conditions.” 211 Arguably the most important change occurred in April 1985, when the CMC decided to establish the PLA’s National Defense University (NDU) by merging the Military Academy, the Political Academy, and the Logistics Academy. To underscore its importance, the CMC tasked Zhang Zhen with establishing the school. He became its first president when the NDU opened its doors in 1986. Unlike Lin Biao’s creation of the Military and Political University in 1969, which was designed to weaken China’s professional military training, the opening of the NDU in 1986 reflected an effort to improve the quality of education for China’s senior officers. Within the PLA, it has roughly the same status as the Central Party School of the CCP as the highest-level training institute for senior officers. 212

After the change in military strategy, the GSD decided to hold several large-scale military exercises. These would focus on the different directions of a Soviet invasion, including in north China, the northwest, and the Bohai Gulf. The first such exercise would be in north China, the most likely direction of attack, to explore how to organize and execute defensive operations. 213 Reflecting the link to the new strategy devised at the “801” meeting, the code name for the exercise was the “802” meeting. Zhang Zhen, then deputy chief of the general staff responsible for training, recalled that the exercise would “resolve the realization (jutihua ) of the strategic guideline of ‘active defense.’ ” 214

The location chosen for the exercise was Zhangjiakou, an important transportation node northwest of Beijing. When held in September 1981, the “north China exercise” ( huabei yanxi ) became the largest field exercise held by the PLA since 1949. More than 110,000 troops participated, including 1,300 tanks and armored vehicles, 1,500 artillery pieces, and 285 airplanes. 215 The exercise, which lasted for five days, was premised on a campaign-level positional defensive operation that had been identified the year before as the core of the new strategy. The main components included an armored and airborne offensive along with positional defense, anti-airborne exercises and a campaign-level counterattack. 216 The exercise included every branch in the ground forces, paratroopers (then part of the PLAAF), and PLAAF units, “reflecting the characteristics of modern warfare.” 217

Before the exercise was held in September, two group training ( jixun ) activities were organized. All told, 247 senior officers from all eleven military regions as well as the services and branches participated. The group training combined detailed lectures on campaign theory focusing on a positional defensive campaign with a week-long scenario planning exercise in which the participants were divided into groups and asked to develop contingency plans “based on the CMC’s strategic guideline and the tasks clarified by the 801 meeting.” 218 Ye Jianying stated that the “ ‘801’ meeting last year unified the forces’ strategic thought and determined ‘active defense’ as the strategic guideline. This year’s ‘802’ meeting will resolve the question of realizing [ jutihua ] the strategic guideline.” 219

When the field exercise began on September 14, 1981, it attracted a great deal of attention from senior leaders. Most of the Politburo, even Hua Guofeng, observed the exercise. Approximately thirty-two thousand people from party and state units also attended, as well as “responsible persons” from all provinces, cities, autonomous regions, and the local area. 220 Deng himself observed all five days of the event. 221 Afterward, Deng stated that the exercise “reflected relatively well the characteristics of modern warfare, explored coordinated operations of the various services and branches and improved … the actual combat level of the army.” 222

The final part of the exercise was a meeting to summarize what had been learned over the past several weeks. As Zhang Zhen recalls, the group training and field exercise helped to build consensus regarding how to implement the new strategic guideline. Most important, the participants agreed on maintaining the principle of “fortifying and garrisoning key points and building a great in-depth defensive system” to deal with various kinds of Soviet attacks. 223

The exercise itself was clearly more aspirational than anything else. The forces participating in the exercise held at least two dress rehearsals ( yuyan ), the first in the middle of August and the second in early September. 224 Zhang Zhen states that organization and coordination among the units, and communications between ground and air forces, “was not done very well.” 225 Nevertheless, this exercise created the model for smaller scale exercises that would occur in the first half of the 1980s.

After the “802” meeting, the pace of campaign-level exercises increased. In August 1982, the Lanzhou Military Region in Xinjiang organized a “three warfares” exercise, which included mobile and guerrilla warfare in addition to positional defensive warfare. 226 Given Xinjiang’s distance from Beijing, geography, and limited forward-deployed forces, the CMC accepted that Xinjiang would have to conduct “independent operations,” which increased the reliance on mobile and guerrilla operations. In 1983, the Second Artillery held its first campaign-level exercise simulating a nuclear counter-strike (as discussed in more detail in chapter 6 ). 227 In August 1984, the Lanzhou Military Region held a live-fire exercise with actual troops ( shibing shidan ) in Gansu at Jiayuguan (where the Great Wall ends), with a strengthened division conducting positional defensive operations. 228

The decision to cut one million more from the force was the result of work that began in early 1984 to formulate and implement the next round of force reductions. When reviewing the 1982 downsizing plan in March 1982, Deng said that “this is not a plan that is relatively satisfactory.” Deng viewed it as a first step, noting that “after it is finished, further plans can be studied.” 229 As Yang Dezhi recalled, “After Chairman Deng read [the 1982 plan], he felt dissatisfied.” 230 He Zhengwen, the deputy chief of staff in charge of downsizing, said Deng’s comments made him “feel great pressure.” 231 In February 1984, after the 1982 downsizing had been completed, Yang Dezhi tasked the streamlining and reorganization leading small group with developing plans for further downsizing. In April 1984, a CMC enlarged meeting approved a reorganization plan that the GSD drafted and instructed that it be developed further. The GSD completed a more detailed preliminary plan by the end of September, which included options for cutting three, five, or seven hundred thousand troops from the force. 232

In October, the CMC convened a forum to discuss the goal of the downsizing plan. Earlier in the month, Deng reviewed the GSD plan and declared that all three options were “too small” and one million should be cut. 233 As Yang Dezhi said when the forum opened, “Recently, Chairman Deng made the decision to reduce the army by one million.” 234 On November 1, Deng explained the decision. Deng repeated earlier assessments that war was not likely for at least ten years, including both a war between the United States and the Soviet Union (who were deterred from attacking each other) and a war involving China, which was now pursuring Deng’s new “independent foreign policy of peace.” 235 Therefore, Deng concluded, “we are able to develop in peace and can shift the focus of our work to development.” 236 Even if war did erupt, Deng said, “we must also trim the fat.” The PLA’s senior leadership bodies were so bloated that they “fundamentally cannot command.” Savings in personnel costs could be used “improve our weapons and equipment and even more importantly raise the quality of our force [ budui ].” 237 By streamlining the general departments, services and branches, and military regions, Deng said, “the efficiency of these institutions will certainly increase.” 238

Although the symposium reached agreement on the goal of cutting one million, the task facing the leading small group was how to achieve it. It would require disbanding combat units formed in the civil war and eliminating almost half of the military regions. The process would create winners and losers. To develop the final plan, the GSD convened forty-two meetings of its party committee and fourteen specialized meetings, including one with the leadership of the three general departments and another with the leadership of the military regions and services. 239 In March 1985, a CMC standing meeting ( changwu huiyi ) approved a revised plan.

From May 23 to June 6, 1985, the CMC held an enlarged meeting to review and approve the plan. At the start of the meeting, Yang Dezhi introduced the downsizing plan, which was then approved. 240 The meeting also approved the “strategic transformation in guiding thought of army building.” Specifically, this was “shifting military work from a state of preparation for an imminent war based on an early, major and nuclear war to the path of peaceful development [ jianshe ].” 241 The PLA could now take full advantage of a peaceful environment to pursue modernization while not placing a burden on economic reforms. 242 Army building would focus on developing new weapons and equipment while raising the quality of personnel. 24 3

At the end of the meeting, Deng provided a broader justification for the CMC’s decisions. He repeated some of the same themes from his November 1984 speech, focusing on China’s assessment of the international environment and China’s new “independent” foreign policy. He declared that “we have changed our view that the danger of war is imminent.” A world war was unlikely because the United States and the Soviet Union, with vast conventional and nuclear arsenals, were deterred from attacking each other, as neither “dares to go first.” 244 More generally, the center of international competition had shifted to economics, in which science and technology would play a key role. Deng’s assessment was also based on the “analysis of our peripheral environment,” a reference to the view that a major war with the Soviet Union was also no longer likely. For this reason, China’s foreign policy shifted from aligning with the United States “in one line” ( yitiaoxian ) against the Soviet Union to an “independent position” in a triangle with the two superpowers. Therefore, Deng said, “we can boldly and wholeheartedly pursue our four modernizations.” 245 Economic growth would take priority over defense. He called for the PLA to be patient, noting that “only when we have a good economic foundation will it be possible for us to modernize the army’s equipment.”

On July 11, 1985, the CMC together with the State Council and Central Committee issued the plan, entitled the Plan for the Reform, Streamlining, and Reorganization of the Military System ( jundui tizhi gaige, jingjian zhengbian de fang’an ). The goal was to develop a force with streamlined administration, more flexible command, and greater combat power by reducing the number of personnel, eliminating the levels of bureaucracy, downgrading units, and closing some installations. 246 When the downsizing was completed in 1987, over a million soldiers—or, roughly, twenty-five percent of the force—had been cut. The total size of the PLA was now 3,235,000, falling to 3,199,000 by 1990. 247 By 1988, defense spending accounted for only 8.8 percent of the national budget, down from 17.4 in 1979 before the three rounds of downsizing had begun.

The 1985 downsizing occurred in two phases. The first phase focused on the three general departments, COSTIND, the services and branches, the military regions, and provincial-level military districts. Personnel in the general departments decreased by 46.5 percent, including the GSD (60 percent), GPD (30.4 percent) and GLD (52 percent). 248 Eleven military regions were merged into seven, reducing the number of personnel in subordinate offices and departments by 53 percent. 249 Within the services, the ground forces were cut by 23.2 percent, including 13.1 percent from the armies. Thirty-five armies were reorganized into twenty-four combined arms group armies, which eliminated eleven army headquarters and thirty-six divisions. Infantry troops were divided into mechanized infantry divisions and motorized infantry divisions in the north, motorized infantry divisions in the south, light motorized infantry divisions and infantry brigades in mountainous areas. 250 Likewise, the navy was reduced by 14.7 percent, with cuts coming from the headquarters and surface fleets, while the air force was reduced by 19.6 percent.

The second phase focused on military academies, support, logistics, and other units. The reconfiguration of military academies began in June 1986. The PLA’s military, political, and logistics academies were combined to form the National Defense University. Along with redundant institutions in the military regions, the number of military academies were reduced from 117 to 103, and the within-quota personnel was reduced from 330,000 to 224,000. 251

First, as shown above, one motivation for the 1985 downsizing was to improve military effectiveness and command flexibility, as identified in the 1980 strategy—goals that motivated the 1980 and 1982 force reductions and reorganizations. These two downsizings, however, were not announced publicly. The 1985 one was publicized as part of China’s new “independent” foreign policy, which avoided alignment with either the United States or the Soviet Union, but was the culmination of efforts since 1980 to reorganize the PLA.

Second, the primary judgment was that China would no longer need to prepare for a total war and could stand down from a war footing posture. Thus, this conclusion altered the assessment of China’s security environment in the 1980 strategy regarding the intensity of the Soviet threat, especially in 1979 and 1980, even though the Soviet Union would remain China’s main adversary until normalization in 1989. In this way, one of the main components of a strategic guideline was altered. Nevertheless, the 1985 meeting did not identify a new threat around which to orient China’s military strategy. Instead, as one PLA scholar describes, it produced “heated debates” over the threats China faced and the wars it might need to fight. 252 The 1985 meeting only excluded one type of conflict, a total war or invasion of China, but did not identify a new one. Only in December 1988, more than three years after the 1985 meeting, would “local wars” ( jubu zhanzheng ) be identified as the main kind of conflict for which China should prepare to fight. If anything, the 1985 meeting produced a period of strategic drift and exploration.

Third, the CMC meeting did not alter other elements of the strategic guideline, including the “form of operations” or “basic guiding thought for operations.” The reason, of course, is that the CMC focused on approving the reduction of one million soldiers and reorganization of the force, not the strategic guideline. Nevertheless, although the 1985 meeting included a key assessment that opened the possibility for focusing on local wars, authorizing such a shift was not the purpose of the meeting. Available sources indicate that changes in assessments of either the form of war or basic guiding thought for operations were not discussed in 1985.

Fourth, the 1985 meeting did not produce change in the indicators of a major change in military strategy. Although the drafting of the third generation of combat regulations was completed at the end of 1987, the drafting began in 1982 after the adoption of the 1980 strategy. Likewise, the Science of Campaigns Outline and Science of Military Strategy , which were also published in 1987, were drafted in the early 1980s and did not reflect the new assessment of the international situation. In terms of force structure, the content of the 1985 downsizing, especially the formation of the combined arms group armies, reflected ideas that had been developed to implement the 1980 strategy.

Surprisingly little information is available regarding the 1988 strategic guideline. One reason is that it represented only a minor change in strategy. According to one AMS scholar, the 1988 guideline reflected the “completion of the adjustment of the military strategic guideline that began in the early 1980s.” 253 Another reason is that the new guideline was adopted only a few months before the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. After the massacre, the PLA turned inward, focusing on internal political education, as described in the next chapter.

The 1988 strategic guideline was the first strategy adopted after the 1985 CMC meeting that affirmed Deng’s assessment about peace and development and the PLA’s shift to peacetime modernization. If the PLA did not need to prepare to fight a total war of an invasion, then the most likely conflicts would be limited or local ones on China’s periphery. The 1988 guideline thus reflected a central implication of the assessment of China’s security environment reached in 1985. Nevertheless, the 1985 assessment only ruled out what kind of war China would need to fight and offered no guidance about the kind of wars China would fight in the future, how they would be fought, or how the PLA should be structured and trained to fight them. 254

To answer these questions, PLA strategists began to explore the future. The GSD convened a series of lectures ( jiangzuo ) from 1986 to 1988, which examined defense modernization and development strategy (1986), local wars and army building (1987), and strategic guidance for military struggle (1988). 255 Under Zhang Zhen’s direction, the PLA’s new NDU convened two major meetings on campaign theory and operational guiding thought in 1986 and 1988. 256 Finally, the PLA organized military exercises in different regions to explore the characteristics of local wars in different strategic directions. In 1987 and 1988, all military regions adjacent to an international boundary conducted exercises based on local conflicts and the particular features of their area, including the Jinan, Shenyang, Beijing, Lanzhou, Guangzhou, and Chengdu Military Regions. 257 Like the lectures, these exercises were exploratory and designed to help the PLA determine what kind of military strategy and campaign principles it should adopt in local wars it might face.

As with other strategic guidelines, the GSD, now under the leadership of Chi Haotian, appeared to play a key role in the adoption of the 1988 guideline. In December 1987, Chi Haotian declared that “our army in the new period urgently needs a clear and complete military strategy.” He instructed the GSD to study high-level operational guidance to “explore our army’s overall strategy, overall guideline, and overall requirements.” The GSD party committee met in February 1988 and drafted a report entitled “Suggestions on Several Issues Regarding Our Army’s Strategic Guidance Until the End of the Century.” In consultation with the military regions, services, and other general departments, the report was revised ten times. 258 The GSD formally submitted its suggestions to the CMC on December 24, 1988, but it is unclear what role it played in the CMC enlarged meeting—which ended on December 20—when the 1988 guideline was adopted. The GSD report contained specific suggestions, but the original report is unavailable.

For the first time since 1949, the People’s Republic in the late 1980s lacked a primary strategic adversary around which to orient its military strategy. The warming of ties with the Soviet Union after Gorbachev’s 1986 speech at Vladivostok and the Soviet commitment to begin withdrawing troops deployed in the Russian Far East reflected a significant reduction in the threat China faced. China did not discount conflict with the Soviets entirely, but the warming of ties with Moscow, which led to the normalization of relations in May 1989, removed what had been the dominant threat to China’s security since 1969. Instead, the overall goal of the 1988 strategic guideline was more general, identifying a kind of war and not an adversary as the focus of planning. Specifically, the 1988 guideline determined that the basis of preparations for military struggle was “dealing with local wars [jubu zhanzheng ] and armed conflicts [wuzhuang chongtu ] that might arise,” 259 especially those associated with China’s outstanding sovereignty and territorial disputes. 260

Despite the lack of a primary strategic adversary, the 1988 strategy placed greater emphasis on China’s southern border and the South China Sea as the situation stabilized in the north. As the first strategy focused on a range of potential local wars and not a total war of invasion, the 1988 guideline was also the first to emphasize strategic guiding thought ( zhanlue zhidao sixiang ) as distinct from basic guiding thought for operations. The strategic guiding thought was “stabilize the northern line, strengthen the southern line, strengthen frontier defense, plan and manage the oceans” ( wending beixian, jiaqiang nanxian, qiangbian gufang, jinglue haiyang ). 261

Because the strategic situation ( taishi ) in the north with the Soviet Union had stabilized, an opportunity existed to improve China’s strategic situation in the south, where disputes remained. 262 These included land border disputes with India and Vietnam, as well as China’s occupation of several reefs in the Spratly Islands. Throughout the 1980s, but especially from 1984 to 1986, a series of intense battles occurred over various hilltops on the disputed Chinese-Vietnamese border. In March 1988, Chinese and Vietnamese forces clashed violently in the Spratly Islands as China moved to occupy six reefs also claimed by Vietnam. 263 During 1986 and 1987, a tense standoff over an observation post on the Chinese-Indian border occurred at Sumdurong Chu, culminating with the mobilization of several divisions on both sides. 264 The confrontation was part of a much larger territorial dispute over 125,000 square kilometers between the two countries. Nevertheless, from a military perspective, defending China’s interests in different territorial disputes on the Tibetan plateau, in jungles along the border with Vietnam, or in the South China Sea required different capabilities and concepts of operations.

The new strategic guideline was adopted at an enlarged meeting of the CMC held in December 1988 to plan military work for the coming year. The meeting also determined that improving combat effectiveness ( zhandouli ) would be the basic standard for assessing all military work. 265 Yang Shangkun, the vice-chairman and secretary of the CMC, broadly defined combat effectiveness to include the quality of military administration ( junzheng suzhi ), weapons and equipment, system and organization ( tizhi bianzhi ), strategy and tactics, and logistics and support. Deviations from strengthening combat effectiveness would mean that “army building was necessarily deviating from the correct direction.” 266 The basic idea was to enhance China’s overall deterrent power, also a new concept when compared with the previous emphasis on how to respond to an invasion.

Based on available sources, the 1988 guideline contained no change to the basic guiding thought for operations. Therefore, it is not associated with any shift in the PLA’s operational doctrine. In June 1988, the PLA had formally issued the “third generation” of combat regulations that it had begun drafting in 1982 and finished drafting in late 1987. When the new regulations were announced, they were described as “absorbing the operational experiences of recent local wars around the world and our counterattack in self-defense against Vietnam.” 267 As the regulations focused on combined arms operations that had been reemphasized in the 1980 strategy, they were also described as “forming an important basis for combined training and operations in the new period.”

Few changes in force structure also occurred. The PLA had just completed the 1985 downsizing in 1987. At the December 1988 enlarged meeting of the CMC, Yang Shangkun elaborated on the nature of the deterrent function of military power amid the competition among states for the strategic initiative. According to Yang, China’s guideline for the development of weapons and equipment was to “maintain the principle of combining crack standing forces and reserve ( houbei ) forces, conventional forces and strategic nuclear deterrent forces … and continuously raise the war fighting capability and integrated deterrent capability of our armed forces.” 268 The focus on “integration” echoed the role of combined arms operations in the 1980 guidelines, but did not appear to contain a new vision for how China’s forces should be structured.

The major change in China’s approach to training during this period was the promulgation of a new training program in 1989 that was implemented in 1990. The program was divided into four parts, one each for the ground forces, navy, air force, and Second Artillery. According to the Liberation Army Daily , the drafting of the new training program began in 1988, after three years of work with three pilot units that developed new training guidelines at all levels from the soldier and platoon to the division. 269 This suggests that the new training program represented an effort to implement ideas that had been developed under the 1980 strategy. In particular, the new training program emphasized combined arms campaigns and tactics, the new group army-centric force structure, and the enhanced role of technical troops in the force. Again, however, this was not a major departure from what the PLA had been undertaking in the previous years.

The strategic guideline adopted in 1980 represents the second major change in China’s military strategy. The content of the guideline, along with its implementation, demonstrate that the PLA’s senior officers sought to prepare for a new kind of war with the Soviet Union. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War shaped how PLA officers believed a Soviet invasion would occur and how best to defend against such an attack. Nevertheless, the deep divisions within the party leadership created by the Cultural Revolution before and after 1973 prevented the PLA from formulating a new strategy to deal with the threat it faced. Once Deng Xiaoping defeated Hua Guofeng and restored party unity, the PLA was able to adopt a new military strategy.

In 1985, the CMC’s announcement of the one-million-soldier downsizing was accompanied by a “strategic transformation in guiding thought for army building” to peacetime modernization. The main reason was Deng’s assessment that the threat of a total war had receded. This assessment opened the door for changing the strategic guideline, but a new military strategy was not adopted at this time. After studying China’s security environment for several years, the CMC in December 1988 adopted a new strategic guideline, in which the basis of preparations for military struggle was “dealing with local wars and military conflicts.” This 1988 strategy for local wars, however, did not describe how such conflicts would be fought or what forces would be required. These questions would only be answered after the outbreak of the Gulf War, as described in the next chapter.