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Since 1993, China has adjusted its military strategy twice: in 2004 and 2014. These strategic guidelines, however, represent minor and not major changes in China’s military strategy. Nevertheless, they merit examination because they are the most recent guidelines that the CMC has adopted. The 2004 guideline remained focused on local wars but highlighted the role of “informatization” in warfare and marked a shift in the main form of operations from joint operations to “integrated joint operations.” The 2014 guideline further emphasized informatization and remains focused on integrated joint operations.

The analysis in this chapter remains preliminary. Unlike the previous strategic guidelines, little documentary evidence is available with which to study the decision-making behind the adoption of the 2004 and 2014 guidelines. The senior military officers involved in formulating them have not yet written their memoirs or may even still be on active duty. Official collections of documents and official chronologies have not yet been compiled for senior military officers on the CMC when these adjustments were made.

This chapter proceeds as follows. The first section examines the 2004 strategic guideline, while the second section examines the 2014 strategic guideline. Each section describes the background to the adoption of these guidelines, their content, and the likely reasons for the change in strategy .

In June 2004, an enlarged meeting of the CMC adopted a new strategic guideline. Available sources suggest that the 2004 strategic guideline did not constitute a major change in China’s military strategy. Instead, it reflected an adjustment to the 1993 strategy, highlighting the manifestation of high technology in warfare as “informatization” or the application of information technology to all aspects of military operations. As one authoritative source describes, the 2004 guideline “enriched and improved” (chongshi wanshan ) the 1993 guideline—language indicating a limited adjustment in military strategy and not a major change. 1

Limited information is available with which to assess the content of the 2004 guideline. No speech or document introducing it has been published. 2 Like the 1993 strategy, the 2004 guideline remained premised on fighting a local war on China’s periphery, not a total war of invasion of Chinese territory. The main strategic direction remained the southeast, referring specifically to a war that might occur over Taiwan and one that could involve the United States. Authoritative doctrinal sources indicate that the PLA remained focused on the same main joint campaigns that were identified under the previous strategy, including island assault (Taiwan), island blockade (Taiwan), and border area counterattack (India) campaigns, among others. 3 The strategic guiding thought in the new guideline was “contain crises, control war situations, win wars” (ezhi weiji, kongzhi zhanju, daying zhanzheng ). 4 In this way, it retained the emphasis in the 1993 strategy on deterrence as well as warfighting, while further stressing crisis prevention, management, and control.

The 2004 guideline was adopted at a June 2004 meeting of the CMC. The key change concerned the assessment of the basis of preparations for military struggle, as “informatized conditions” ( xinxihua tiaojian ) replaced “high-technology conditions” in the 1993 guideline. 5 At the meeting, Jiang Zemin stated that “we must clearly place the basis of preparations for military struggle on winning local wars under informatized conditions.” This change reflected the CMC’s judgment that “the basic characteristic of high-technology warfare is informatized warfare. Informatized warfare will become the basic form [ xingtai ] of 21st century warfare.” 6 Jiang instructed that the PLA “must adapt to the transformation in the basis of preparations for military struggle, promote deeper development of a military transformation with Chinese characteristics, and realize the strategic goals of building an informatized force [ jundui ] and winning informatized wars.” 7 In December 2004, the change in the strategic guideline was announced only indirectly to the public, when the 2004 defense white paper stated that the PLA “should be rooted in winning local wars under informatized conditions.” 8

“Informatization” is an awkward translation of the Chinese term “ xinxihua .” In China, informatization is a national-level concept used in civil as well as military affairs to describe the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age generated by the development, spread, and application of information technology. As Joe McReynolds and James Mulvenon explain, informatization “describes the process of moving toward greater collection, systematization, distribution, and utilization of information.” 9 Thus, informatization affects and shapes all aspects of society, including the economy and governance, as well as warfare. In 2006, for example, China’s State Council issued a State Informatization Development Strategy ( guojia xinxihua fazhan zhanlue ) to guide the overall development of informatization. 10 In 2008, the State Council established the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) to oversee and regulate the development of IT hardware and software as well as postal services and telecommunications.

Within the military sphere, informatization changes how military capabilities will be generated and how wars will be fought. Information itself is not only a new domain, but also what connects other domains such as the land, sea, and air with each other. Warfare “under informatized conditions” refers to the application of information technology to all aspects of military operations, including sensors and electronics on weapons systems and platforms, automated command and control systems, and nonlethal information operations (such as information, cyber, electronic, public opinion, psychological, and legal warfare). 11 The “informatization” of weapons makes them more precise and more lethal, and, when networked together, enables the unified, simultaneous command of disparate units and forces. 12 Command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems gather and process large amounts of information to command “informatized” weapons, platforms, and units to increase the efficiency, flexibility, responsiveness, and effectiveness of military forces. Operations under informatized conditions occur at a high tempo, over a large physical area, in multiple domains simultaneously, and in all-weather conditions. Such operations are often described as “system of systems” confrontations, in contrast to more traditional confrontations between individual platforms or services. These systems of systems “are created through the integration of information flows that themselves are generated by the incorporation of information technology into every facet of military activities.” 13

In the 2004 strategic guideline, the PLA altered its description of the main form of operations it would conduct. “Integrated joint operations” (yitihua lianhe zuozhan ) replaced “joint operations” as the main form of operations. The new terminology first appeared in the 2004 white paper on national defense, which stated that the PLA “should adapt to the requirements of integrated joint operations.” 14 Earlier, in February 2004, the GSD’s annual training guidance emphasized training “according to the requirements of integrated joint operations.” 15 The concept was featured in a speech by Hu Jintao at an enlarged meeting of the CMC in December 2005 and in the 2006 edition of the Science of Campaigns , an authoritative textbook published by the PLA’s NDU. 16 As Hu Jintao summarized in June 2006, “Local wars under informatized conditions are a confrontation of systems of systems and the basic form of operations is integrated joint operations.” 17

The main difference between the 1993 and 2004 concepts of joint operations revolves around how units from the services interact with each other in a campaign. Some analysts described the new concept as “fully integrated” or “unified” joint operations and the old one as merely “coordinated” joint operations. 18 Under the rubric of the latter, the actions of different services would be coordinated to achieve the operational or campaign goal, usually by assigning discrete roles and missions to different units. Under the former, units from the services would not just be coordinated in their action, but fused or integrated together, which informatization writ large now enables. As Dean Cheng describes, “The PLA’s conception of joint operations has shifted from multiple, individual services operating together in a coordinated fashion in the same physical space to unified operations under a single command-and-control network.” 19

Consistent with the adjustment in the main form of operations, the PLA also adjusted the basic guiding thought for operations. Some uncertainty exists, however, surrounding the new formulation. A 2006 textbook on campaigns from the PLA’s NDU states that “integrated operations, subduing the enemy through precision strikes” ( zhengti zuozhan, jingda zhidi ) replaced “integrated operations, keypoint strikes” from the 1993 strategy. 20 But in a 2012 textbook on campaigns, the basic guiding thought was described as “information dominance, precision operations, destruction of systems, overall victory” ( xinxi zhudao, jingque zuozhan, tixi poji, zhengti zhisheng ). 21 A 2013 textbook on joint operations describes basic guiding thought in a similar way, replacing “destruction of systems” with “destroy strategic points” ( zhongda yaohai ). 22 Another 2013 textbook, on joint campaigns, offers a different formulation of “integrated operations, destruction of systems, asymmetrical operations, striving for quick decision” ( yitihua zuozhan, tixi poji, feiduicheng zuozhan, liqiu sujue ). 23

The reason for the different formulations of the basic guiding thought for integrated joint operations is that the PLA never finalized the drafting of the fifth generation of operations regulations. Drafting began in 2004 and was completed in 2009. Some regulations were given to units on a trial basis in 2010, but the fifth generation of regulations were never promulgated. According to Yang Zhiyuan, the general who was responsible for drafting operations regulations, these regulations include elements of informatization, including information warfare and electronic warfare. 24 Joint operations have received much greater prominence. 25 In addition to a revised joint campaign outline ( gangyao ), these regulations included eleven outlines on various aspects of joint operations along with campaign outlines for each of the services, the PAP, political work, counterterror operations, and the “three warfares” (public opinion, psychological, legal). 26 Eighty-six regulations were drafted for the services, PAP, logistics, and support.

In September 2004, just months after the 2004 guideline was adopted, a new CMC was formed. For the first time, its members included the commanders of each of the services as well as the Second Artillery, reflecting the growing importance that China’s high command attached to joint operations. Previously, officers from the ground forces occupied most of the positions on the CMC, which, along with the persistence of the system of army-dominated military region command structures, posed a clear obstacle to effectively conducting joint operations.

Nevertheless, the services and subordinate branches were not substantially reorganized following the adjustment of the 2004 guideline. Instead, the services were recapitalized, a process that was most evident in the navy and the air force. In the navy, for example, the number of “new type” or modern destroyers and frigates increased from twenty-seven in 2007 to forty-nine in 2014. 27 Likewise, the number of “new-type” or modern submarines increased from twenty-one in 2007 to forty-five in 2014. 28 In the air force, the proportion of ground attack and support aircraft grew to almost fifty percent of the force, further reducing the almost exclusive reliance on interceptors with a limited territorial defense role. 29 The PLA also began to develop an integrated joint logistics system to replace the separate logistics branches within each service and branch. 30

In addition, the PLA undertook smaller-scale reforms to promote informatization of the force. In 2005, the CMC promulgated an outline on army informatization building and planning ( quanjun xinxihua jianshe jihua ) to guide informatization through 2020. Headquarters regulations updated in 2006 also stressed the need for greater informatization. As early as 2003, the PLA established an army-wide informatization leading small group under the GSD. 31 Likewise, starting in the late 2000s, the PLA began to deploy an “integrated command platform” ( yitihua zhihui pingtai ) to improve the PLA’s C4ISR capabilities at the operational level. The platform reportedly provides real-time information about the battlespace to improve the command of forces, along with intelligence, weather, and geospatial data. 3 2

A new military training and evaluation program was issued in July 2008 and took effect in January 2009. Drafting of the new program began after an army-wide training conference in June 2006 and was revised to adapt to the requirements of integrated joint operations and informatized conditions. It also sought to increase the overall amount of time devoted to training: night training, high-intensity training, and training to generate integrated operational capabilities. 33 The new training program sparked an increase in joint training exercises, usually at the brigade level and within a single military region. 34 In 2009, when the new training program was issued, the PLA began to develop joint campaign training exercises, which usually involved units from different military regions. 35 Perhaps the most noteworthy exercise was “Stride-2009,” which involved four divisions from four different military regions. This was the first transregional exercise in PLA history, which involved the coordination of units from different military regions and not just the participation of units from different military regions. Also in 2009, the CMC tasked the Jinan Military Region with developing a theater-level joint training leadership organization to serve as a pilot project for coordinating and developing joint training at the military region level. 36

Despite being a minor change in China’s military strategy, available sources suggest that the 2004 guideline was adopted for reasons consistent with the central argument of this book. PLA sources indicate a growing awareness of the centrality of information in “high technology” in the conduct of warfare as revealed in conflicts involving the United States. As an AMS textbook describes, “Several recent local wars, especially the 1999 Kosovo War and the 2003 Iraq War, gave us a glimpse of the vivid realities of local wars under informatized conditions, providing us with many lessons.” 37

On March 24, 1999, United States–led NATO forces launched a seventy-eight-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia over Kosovo. China had opposed the war at the United Nations, making it a salient conflict for China politically as well as militarily. In addition, on May 7, 1999, five US JDAM bombs struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and wounding twenty people.

Even before the embassy bombing, the air war sparked a significant debate within China over Deng Xiaoping’s assessment that “peace and development” represented the “trend of the times.” The core issue was whether China still enjoyed the time and security to focus on economic development that would allow the PLA to modernize under less constrained and urgent conditions. The debate concluded by reaffirming that peace and development would continue, along with a gradual shift toward multipolarization. 38 Nevertheless, “hegemonism” was seen as increasing, along with the frequency of military interventions. The Kosovo War also suggested a US willingness to intervene in a conflict over Taiwan and thus China’s need to prepare to resist a “strong adversary.” In this way, the air war in Kosovo had a greater impact on the PLA’s threat perceptions than the 1995–96 Taiwan Straits crisis. 39

The PLA high command studied the war closely. As an asymmetric conflict, it would hold important implications for China, which still viewed itself as relatively weak militarily. Even before the war ended, Chief of the General Staff Fu Quanyou ordered the GSD to “study the style and characteristics of the U.S. military operations.” 40 On May 21, 1999, the GSD convened its first meeting on the war, which involved participants from nineteen units, and then submitted a preliminary report on the war to the CMC that emphasized the need to improve China’s air defenses. In the middle of October 1999, AMS and the CMC general office dispatched a group of military experts to study how Yugoslavia had sought to counter NATO operations. 41

Militarily, the PLA learned important lessons from the Kosovo War that would influence the adjustment to the 1993 strategic guideline in 2004. In July 1999, CMC vice-chairman Zhang Wannian concluded that the Kosovo War, along with the Gulf War, “raised a series of important questions for our country’s national defense, army building, and preparations for military struggle.” 42 In February 2000, Fu Quanyou foreshadowed the shift in the main form of operations from joint operations to integrated joint operations, describing the most important aspect of the war as “integrated joint operations of the services” focusing on land, sea, air, space, and electromagnetic operations. 43

In March 2000, the PLA’s NDU authored a detailed assessment of the war, which the GSD’s training department then published. Regarding the conduct of warfare, the report concluded that “in modern wars, information superiority is the basic superiority. Whoever has information superiority … will be able to gain the initiative in war.” The report described NATO as using advanced technologies to “carry out the total disruption, suppression and destruction of Yugoslavia’s command center and telecommunications system.” Moreover, NATO’s sophisticated C4ISR allowed it “to gain total information dominance on the battlefield, creating the conditions for winning the war.” 44 The combination of intelligence, electronic, psychological, network and other forms of information warfare were described as key to NATO’s victory. 45 Specific capabilities emphasized included the persistent and continuous reconnaissance and all-spectrum jamming, 46 along with the use of satellites, reconnaissance aircraft, and early warning aircraft to gather intelligence, 47 and the use of “electromagnetic superiority” to jam Yugoslav communications and radars that enabled many “soft kills.” 48

The report’s second main conclusion focused on the lethality of air strikes in modern warfare and the need for China to develop appropriate countermeasures. This, of course, reflected the fact that ground forces were not used and air strikes were the primary means of attack. Nevertheless, the NDU study highlighted the use of short-range and long-range airstrikes, precision strikes, and stealth aircraft. 49 Since a ground invasion of China was unlikely, air strikes were viewed as the most likely way in which Chinese territory would be attacked in the future. As the study concluded, “An air strike includes aerospace integration, long-range attack, ultra-long range attack, stealth strike, precision attack, speed, and flexible control characteristics. The powerful attack and rapid mobility capabilities of air power can conduct comprehensive in-depth ‘non-contact’ strikes against the enemy.” 50 Of course, such air strikes were seen as the most likely way in which the United States, as a “strong enemy,” might attack China, a concern elevated by the political-military context of the air war. 51

After the 1999 Kosovo War, discussion within the PLA of informatized conditions and informatized warfare increased. By 2000, a consensus began to emerge around the importance of informatization. As Fu Quanyou said in September 2000, “Informatized war is gradually becoming the dominant form of warfare.” 52 In a speech to an enlarged meeting of the CMC in December 2000, Jiang Zemin noted that “high-technology local wars since the Gulf War demonstrate that information technology plays an extremely important role in modern warfare. The main characteristic of high-technology war is informatization. The new military transformation is essentially a revolution in military informatization. Informatization is becoming a multiplier of the combat effectiveness of the armed forces.” 53

By 2002, the consensus that informatization is the core manifestation of high technology in local wars appeared to have been consolidated. In December 2002, Jiang Zemin drew attention to the importance of informatization in a speech at an enlarged meeting of the CMC. 54 Like Jiang’s other speeches in his capacity as CMC chairman, it was likely drafted by CMC’s general office or the GSD. Jiang stated that the growing role of high technology in warfare, described as a part of a “revolution” beginning in the 1980s, was entering a new phase due to the wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan. According to Jiang, “The new transformation in military affairs is entering into a new stage of qualitative changes and will likely develop into a profound military revolution that spreads around the globe and involves all military fields.” 55 Jiang described informatization as “the core” of these changes and identified four trends. First, informatized weapons and equipment would determine the core of a military’s combat capability. Second, the role of stand-off strikes, described as noncontact and nonlinear operations, would become more important. Such strikes would be used to target an opponent’s C4ISR, air defense, and other systems. Third, “confrontations among systems will become the basic feature of battlefield confrontations.” Fourth, space had become “the new strategic high ground.” 56

Jiang’s speech portrayed informatization as a great challenge for China and the PLA. It was described as “an important manifestation of the pressure our country still faces from the economic and scientific superiority of developed countries,” which complemented the political pressure they were able to exert. Furthermore, informatization of military affairs would likely “further widen the gap in military power between China and the major countries of the world and increase the potential threat to our country’s military security.” 57 In this way, Jiang’s speech reflected China’s identity as a late military modernizer, seeking to catch up with more advanced military powers.

Nevertheless, Jiang did not announce a change in the strategic guideline. Instead, he raised several issues for further discussion by the high command, which indicated that consensus around the importance of informatization had not yet produced a consensus regarding how China should adjust its military strategy. Addressing this directly, Jiang said “we should further deepen our research on strategic guiding thought and principles.” 58 Specifically, he highlighted the need for greater study of strategic deterrence and joint operations. Regarding the latter, he said, “In 1993, we continued to emphasize the idea of coordinated operations, but now we should greatly strengthen the study of joint operations of the various services and branches in order to promote the development of the theory and practice of our joint operations.” 59

Why did the CMC not change the strategic guideline in 2002? Two reasons are likely. First, although the PLA acknowledged the growing importance of informatization in the conduct of warfare, exactly how it might shape future operations remained unclear because the lessons from Kosovo were limited to informatization in the context of air power. Although some of the US aircraft used in the Kosovo War were launched from carriers in the Adriatic Sea, the war did not involve the significant use of other naval forces, such as surface or submarine combatants, or any use of ground forces. US operations in Afghanistan were ongoing and by December 2002 it was increasingly likely that the United States was going to invade Iraq, which would reveal broader lessons.

The second reason may be related to Jiang’s decision to retain the CMC chairmanship after Hu Jintao became general secretary of the CCP at the Sixteenth Party Congress in October 2002. By staying on the CMC, Jiang was following in the footsteps of Deng Xiaoping, who remained chairman of the CMC after relinquishing all of his other party posts at the Thirteenth Party Congress in 1987. Jiang may have sought to ensure a smooth transition to a new generation of leaders or to maintain his ability to influence the direction of the party’s policies. He also developed an interest in military affairs during his thirteen years as general secretary, however, and may have wanted to consolidate his legacy in this area by presiding over the formal shift in the strategic guideline from high-technology conditions to informatized ones.

China’s assessment of the Kosovo War provides little evidence for emulation as a driver of the 2004 strategy. The main conclusion was that air strikes were more powerful and destructive than previously imagined—enabled by informatization as well as by advances in weapons systems—and that China was quite vulnerable to such strikes. The PLA moved to develop countermeasures, not its own ability to conduct similar offensive air operations. As the NDU report concluded, the PLA “must strengthen research on counter-air raid operations.” 60 This included a new variation of the “three attacks and three defenses.” The three attacks were reconnaissance, jamming, and precision strikes, while the three defenses were early warning and counter-reconnaissance, mobility, and surface-to-air missile systems. 61 More generally, the role of information in NATO operations illustrated just how far China lagged behind the United States. The report also concluded that China needed to “greatly develop information systems and weapons and equipment for information operations to narrow the gap with developed countries.” Although the PLA closely studied US operations in the war, it studied the Serbian response with equal care and attention.

On March 20, 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom led a coalition of thirty states and 380,000 troops to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. By April 14, allied forces had captured Baghdad, concluding the high-intensity phase of the war. On May 1, US President George W. Bush declared the end of major military operations. If the Kosovo War highlighted the role of information in warfare, the invasion of Iraq demonstrated its broad application and effectiveness with greater and more diverse forces, across a much wider area.

The PLA watched the invasion of Iraq closely. Within nine months, PLA research institutes published three assessments of the war, analyzing its origins, the operations by each side, its main characteristics, and the implications for China. The first was a study from the PLA’s NDU; 62 the second, a study from the PLA’s Nanchang Ground Forces Academy; 63 and the third, a collection of essays from well-known strategists at AMS and NDU, which was published by AMS. 64 In the absence of sources that can directly reveal the views of senior military officers, these internal assessments serve as proxies for what the PLA viewed as the main characteristics of the war and shifts in the conduct of warfare that may have been revealed. Two of the reports were published with circulation restricted within the PLA ( junnei ) and so were likely read by senior officers or their staffs.

First, these assessments conclude that the Iraq War further demonstrated the trend toward informatization in warfare and the full integration of military operations in joint operations that informatization enables. The Nanchang Academy study concluded that the Iraq War “is the war with the highest level of informatization so far in the world today.” 65 According to the AMS report, the invasion showed that “high-technology warfare advanced greatly toward informatized warfare.” 66 The NDU study concluded that the “informatized weapons and equipment of the American military has made the form of war gradually move in the direction of informatization and has even begun to dominate the battlefield.” 67 Informatization increased the effectiveness, lethality, and speed of military operations, in which fewer forces that are closely coordinated and integrated together achieve much greater effects. For the authors of the NDU study, “the amount of force that the United States used in this war was not even half as much as the first Gulf War, but in a smaller period of time [it] was able to occupy Iraq.” 68

Although each PLA study stressed slightly different elements of the invasion, several common themes in the discussions of the conduct of military operations and informatization can be identified. One theme was the deployment and use of informatized weapons systems and platforms. The Nanchang Academy study observed that more than sixty percent of naval weapons and systems and seventy percent of Air Force ones were informatized. 69 Special focus was given to the use of systems that could be employed beyond visual range, enabling “non-contact” operations or stand-off strikes. Another theme was the greatly expanded use of precision-guided munitions. All three studies noted that the use of precision-guided munitions grew from eight percent of all munitions expended in the 1990–1991 Gulf War to sixty-eight percent in the Iraq War. 70 A final theme was the use of extensive C4ISR systems to integrate these weapons and munitions controlled by the different services over a wide area. Units communicated with each other much more quickly and easily, while commanders possessed a high degree of battlespace or domain awareness within which to deploy these units. 71

Second, high levels of informatization enabled the deep integration of forces to execute joint operations. In this way, all three studies foreshadowed the emphasis on “integrated joint operations” as the main form of operations in the 2004 strategy. The AMS report, for example, highlighted “the close coordination of services and branches, a unified entity [ hunruan yiti ] [in which] integrated joint operations were raised to an unprecedented level, fully displaying overall operational strength.” 72 Examples included the coordination among ground units and between air and ground units, especially in the drive to Baghdad, in which precision air strikes were coordinated with armored and special forces on the ground. 73 One consequence of this integration was what the Nanchang Academy study called “precision strike joint operations,” referring not to the use of precision-guided munitions but to the precision with which operations could be conducted when enabled by information superiority and robust C4ISR systems used by the United States and its allies. 74

Third, the central role of information in military operations in the war underscored the importance of achieving information superiority in addition to air superiority. For PLA analysts, the Iraq War confirmed what the Kosovo War had suggested—that information dominance had become the key factor influencing its conduct and conclusion. Seizing information superiority was now a “primary task” in war. 75 The side that controlled information would have overwhelming advantages, while the side that lacked control would be rendered ineffective. All PLA studies of the war emphasized the efforts in the opening days to dismantle Iraq’s command and control system, thereby limiting its ability to mount an effective defense while gaining information superiority.

Two other topics in these PLA assessments should be noted. First, air power was viewed as playing a decisive role in the war. Although none of the studies suggested that air power alone could produce victory, the lack of air power would have greatly complicated the operations. As the NDU study observed, “Defeat in the air can cause defeat on the land (or on the sea).” 76 Second, PLA analysts highlighted psychological warfare, such as efforts to sow divisions within the Iraqi leadership and split the Iraqi people from the leadership as well as weaken the morale of Iraqi forces. The Nanchang Academy study concluded that “along with the arrival of informatized war, it plays a more and more important role.” 77

Shortly after replacing Jiang Zemin as CMC chairman, Hu Jintao introduced the idea of a “new historic mission” for the PLA at an enlarged meeting of the CMC in December 2004. This new mission centered around four main tasks that the PLA should carry out for the party. a Nevertheless, it should not be viewed (and is not viewed by the PLA) as a change in the strategic guideline. One goal was to explain expanding the roles of the PLA beyond warfighting into what was described as “non-war military operations” (fei zhanzheng junshi xingdong ), such as disaster relief, to help the party maintain stability within China and overseas. Another goal was to highlight new domains in which the PLA would need to operate to defend China’s interests, such as the maritime, outer space, and electromagnetic domains. The latter two had already been identified in the 2004 guideline as areas of importance, but received additional emphasis .

The first two tasks in the PLA’s new historic mission were linked squarely with the internal goal of enhancing regime security. The first task was “to provide an important powerful guarantee to consolidate the party’s ruling status.” 78 Although defense of the CCP and regime security have been a long-standing goal for China’s armed forces, pre-dating even Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, it was reemphasized by Hu because of the new challenges that the party faced as the transition from a planned economy to the market accelerated. China’s leaders believe that political instability can not only disrupt economic growth, but also pose a clear challenge to the CCP’s legitimacy. Likewise, the second task was “to provide a strong security guarantee for protecting the great period of strategic opportunity for national development.” 79 This refers to territorial and boundary disputes with other countries in addition to independence movements in Taiwan, separatist movements within China in areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet, and the challenge of maintaining domestic stability amid a rise in mass incidents and public demonstrations. Although this task combined internal and external questions of sovereignty, both reflected how disruptions in any of these areas would upset social stability and challenge the party.

The third task in the PLA’s new historic mission was most closely related to conventional military strategy. This was “to provide a powerful strategic support for safeguarding national interests,” with a particular emphasis on the defense of China’s growing interests in the maritime, space, and cyber domains. 80 If the first two tasks highlighted traditional concerns for the CCP with clear implications for regime stability, the space and cyber components of the third task overlapped with and further emphasized the core elements of informatization that had prompted the adjustment in military strategy earlier in 2004.

The fourth task also had a clear external orientation, but its purpose was not combat oriented. This task for the PLA was “to play an important role in maintaining world peace and promoting common development.” 81 This reflected China’s growing integration with other regions of the world, especially regions where it engaged in trade and investment, and the importance for China of contributing to maintaining stability in these regions.

When Hu Jintao introduced the concept of the PLA’s new historic mission, he also outlined the capabilities that it should possess. During an enlarged meeting of the CMC in December 2005, he said that “we must … continuously raise the ability to deal with multiple security threats to ensure that our army can deal with crises, maintain peace, contain wars, and win wars under different kinds of complicated situations.” 82 During a 2006 meeting with PLA delegates to the NPC, Hu similarly instructed the PLA to “work hard to develop capabilities to deal with many kinds of security threats and complete diversified military tasks.” 83

The phrase “many kinds of security threats” refers to the goals that were part of the four tasks for the PLA’s new historic mission in addition to conventional military ones. “Diversified military tasks” means using China’s growing military capabilities in two different ways. The first highlights the conventional warfighting capabilities that were part of the 2004 strategic guideline. The second, however, emphasizes noncombat operations to enhance regime security and promote economic development by maintaining stability at home and abroad. The types of noncombat operations most frequently discussed in authoritative sources are those that help the state maintain public order and, ultimately, defend the CCP. 84 Domestic noncombat operations can be grouped into three broad categories. The first is disaster relief, such as the operations that the PLA conducted after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan. The second is maintaining social stability, including containing demonstrations, riots, uprisings, rebellions, and large-scale mass incidents that would upset social order, especially in China’s ethnic minority regions. A third category includes counterterrorism, which primarily addresses domestic terrorism, such as the attacks against government officials in many areas of Xinjiang in the 1990s or the heightened concerns about terrorist attacks during the 2008 Olympics and the sixtieth anniversary of the People’s Republic in October 2009. 85 What unites these types of operations with others such as border security and garrison operations is that they all stress bolstering regime security through maintaining social order and managing internal challenges to the CCP. 86

However, not all of the new noncombat operations identified for China’s armed forces are domestic. The two most frequently discussed international noncombat operations are peacekeeping and disaster relief. Peacekeeping is the only international noncombat operation that receives as much attention in Chinese writings as the domestic ones. 87 In addition to enhancing China’s image in international society, these operations play an important role in maintaining a stable external environment that facilitates China’s development and indirectly bolsters regime security and have also allowed select units to gain expeditionary military experience. Peacekeeping has attracted the most attention, and it is the one international noncombat operation where the PLA and PAP have accumulated the most experience.

In the summer of 2014, the PLA’s strategic guideline changed for a ninth time. Available sources suggest that the 2014 strategy did not constitute a major change in China’s military strategy. Instead, it reflected an adjustment to the 2004 strategy by further emphasizing the role of informatization in warfare and justifying far-reaching organizational reforms that the PLA needed to undertake in order to effectively execute joint operations.

The change in the strategic guideline was not announced publicly. Nevertheless, new language in China’s 2015 defense white paper, published in May 2015, indicated that the guideline had changed. As the white paper noted, China adjusts its strategy “according to the evolution of the form of war and the national security situation.” 88 The white paper contained two new assessments that informed the change. The first was that further evolution in warfare required a change in the basis of preparations for military struggle for the PLA, noting that “the basis of preparations for military struggle will be placed on winning informatized local wars.” This adjustment consisted of dropping only four characters from the 2004 strategy, changing from “winning local wars under the conditions of informatization” to “winning informatized local wars” ( daying xinxihua jubu zhanzheng ). As one AMS scholar describes, the removal of these characters indicates that “a qualitative change has occurred.” 89

The white paper’s section on China’s national security situation summarizes the assessment that the form of war has changed. Information, broadly defined, now plays a “leading role” in war and is no longer just an “important condition” of warfare. 90 According to the white paper, “The form of war is accelerating its transformation to informatization.” These changes included “clear trends” toward the development and use of long-range, precision, smart, and unmanned weapons and equipment. Space and cyber domains are described as becoming the “commanding heights of strategic competition.” These trends, which have been occurring over the past decade, require a change in the basis of preparations for military struggle that forms the foundation of any strategic guideline.

The 2014 strategy also contained new strategic guiding thought. The goals in the strategy emphasized balancing the defense of China’s rights and interests with the maintenance of stability, “firmly safeguarding national territorial sovereignty, unification, and security,” and supporting China’s development. 91 Toward this end, the new strategic guiding thought was “emphasize farsighted planning and management, shape favorable situations, comprehensively manage crises, and resolutely deter wars and win wars” ( zhuzhong shenyuan jinglue, suzao youli taishi, zonghe guankong weiji, jianjue ezhi zhanzheng he daying zhanzheng ). This strategic guidance highlighted the shift from territorial defense to protecting China’s developmental interests and coordinating military tools with economic and diplomatic ones to create a favorable environment for development. It also stressed preventing crises from erupting but controlling them if they did in addition to the importance of strategic deterrence in deterring wars. 92 Along these lines, important elements of the new strategy were “effectively controlling major crises, properly handling possible chain reactions.” 93

Importantly, however, the main form of operations in the strategy remained unchanged. That is, the main form of operations remained “integrated joint operations,” as identified in the 2004 strategy. The white paper does call for the PLA to “create new basic operational thought” for integrated joint operations. Specifically, it suggests that the operational guiding thought is “information dominance, precision strikes on strategic points, joint operations to gain victory” ( xinxi zhudao, jingda yaohai, lianhe zhisheng ), but this seems similar to the guiding thought of the 2004 strategy. The PLA has not yet drafted new operations regulations as part of this change in strategy.

The second assessment is that China faces more pressing national security threats, especially in the maritime domain. The white paper stresses the role of “maritime military struggle” and “preparations for maritime military struggle.” Previous strategic guidelines did not highlight specific domains, but nevertheless implied the dominance of ground warfare. One factor, clearly, is the intensification of disputes over territorial sovereignty and maritime jurisdiction in waters adjacent to China, or the near seas. The white paper concludes that the “maritime rights defense struggle will exist for a long time.” The second factor is “the continuous expansion of China’s national interests,” in which overseas interests such as access to markets and open sea lines of communication “have become prominent.” These are not new concerns for China, but they have become more prominent in Chinese assessments of their security environment compared with previous editions of the white paper.

Consistent with the increasing focus on the maritime domain, the white paper states publicly for the first time that the Chinese navy’s strategic concept “will gradually shift from ‘near-seas defense’ [ jinhai fangyu ] to the combination of ‘near-seas defense’ and ‘far-seas protection’ [ yuanhai huwei ].” 94 Near-seas defense emphasizes defending China’s immediate maritime interests, especially in territorial and jurisdictional disputes in the seas adjacent to the Chinese mainland. Far seas protection emphasizes safeguarding China’s expanding interests overseas, such as the protection of sea lines of communication and Chinese businesses abroad. 95 The former requires an active posture, while the latter suggests a reactive one. 96

The white paper does not identify the main strategic direction that defines the geographic focus of strategy. Nevertheless, the primary strategic direction appears to be the same, focusing on Taiwan and China’s southeast, but may have been expanded to include the Western Pacific or what retired Lieutenant General Wang Hongguang describes as the “Taiwan Strait-Western Pacific” direction. 97 Whether the South China Sea has become part of the primary strategic direction remains unclear. While Wang notes such a link, he still writes that the “Taiwan Strait is the primary strategic campaign direction” and the “nose of the ox.” 98

Although the white paper confirms that the strategic guideline has been adjusted, it does not state when the decision was made. Historically, the CMC has adopted or adjusted the strategic guidelines at enlarged meetings. These meetings, however, are rarely publicized. In 2004, for example, the change in strategy was introduced during an enlarged meeting of the CMC that was held in June. 99 Yet the first public reference to the strategy did not occur until the publication of the 2004 defense white paper six months later. The meeting itself was never publicized. Likewise, speeches about a new strategic guideline are not openly published when the guideline is introduced and sometimes never openly published at all. Jiang Zemin’s speech introducing the 1993 guideline, for example, was not released until 2006.

The CMC most likely decided to adjust the strategic guideline in the summer of 2014. The phrase “winning informatized local wars” has appeared in the Liberation Army Daily 94 times. But 81 of these references have occurred since mid-August 2014 (as of September 2018). The term first appeared in an August 21, 2014, article announcing a new GSD document on improving the level of realistic training. 100 Over this same period, 308 articles have appeared with the term “the military strategic guideline in the new situation” ( xin xingshi xia junshi zhanlue fangzhen ), which is an indirect reference to the 2014 strategy. The term first appeared in an article on the eighty-seventh anniversary of the PLA’s founding published on August 2, 2014, suggesting that the change in strategy occurred sometime in July. 101 This term only appeared once before, in September 2010, and now appears in many official PLA documents to refer to the strategy adopted under Xi Jinping. Thus, the strategy may have been changed in July 2014. At an “important meeting” on July 7, 2014, Xi urged high-ranking cadre to “implement the military strategic guideline” by “promoting the requirements of the military strategic guideline in army building, reform, and preparations for military struggle.” 102 Later, during a meeting with newly appointed officers at the army level ( junji ) in October 2014, he referred to the “military strategic guideline in the new situation” to urge the audience that “all construction work throughout the army must be carried out under the new strategic guideline and be subject to the requirements of serving the strategic guideline.” 103

The guideline was likely adjusted in the summer of 2014 to provide top-level support and justification for the organizational reforms of the PLA announced in November 2015. Broadly speaking, the reforms are designed to improve joint operations by dividing responsibility for commanding troops from managing the development and training of forces. Toward this end, the organizational changes are unprecedented: transforming seven military regions into five theater commands, breaking up the four general departments into fifteen smaller organizations directly under the CMC, elevating the Second Artillery from a branch to a service, creating a separate ground forces command, establishing a Strategic Support Force (SSF) with a focus on space and cyber, and cutting three hundred thousand troops from the armed forces. 104 Notably, the reforms contained changes that the PLA had considered in the past, such as the establishment of the ground forces command first raised in the early 1980s and again in the late 1990s. Other goals were to improve the process of force development and discipline.

The adjustment in military strategy and the PLA reforms were foreshadowed together at the Third Plenum of the Eighteenth Party Congress, which met in November 2013 and outlined an ambitious program for “deepening reform” in all areas of the party, state, and economy. In the past, any reorganization or downsizing of the PLA has occurred only several years after the adoption of a new strategy. This time, however, the intention to alter the military strategy and reorganize the PLA were announced simultaneously. This strongly suggests that the main reason for revising the strategic guideline was to provide an overarching framework for the reforms that would be undertaken.

When the plenum concluded, the Central Committee issued its “decision” outlining the reforms that would be pursued. The preamble to the section on national defense noted the need to “improve [ wanshan ] the military strategic guideline for the new period” or to adjust China’s military strategy. 105 The decision then called for “reform of the military leadership system.” The next month, in December 2013, Xi Jinping explained at an enlarged meeting of the CMC that, despite past efforts to reform the PLA, “deep-rooted contradictions were not resolved” and these “fundamentally restrict army building and preparations for military struggle.” Xi stressed that the PLA’s “leadership and management system is unscientific” and “the command system for joint operations is unsound.” 106 Later in the speech, he noted that “we have extensively explored the command system for joint operations, but the problem has not been fundamentally resolved.” 107 Thus, the purpose of changing strategy appears to be linked closely with the need to further reform the PLA. No significant shift in the conduct of warfare occurred from 2004 to 2014 to prompt adoption of a new strategy, nor did it contain a new vision of warfare. Nevertheless, the strategy did justify the reforms necessary for effectively conducting the integrated joint operations that had been identified in 2004.

The emphasis on the maritime domain also suggests that changes in China’s security environment and threat perceptions were a secondary factor in the decision to adopt a new strategy in 2014. The maritime threats are not described as dominant, only “more prominent,” and thus are secondary in importance when compared with pursuing the reforms outlined in the plenum. Looking forward, the focus on the maritime domain in the 2015 white paper suggests that threat perceptions are likely to play an even more important role in future changes in China’s strategy, assuming that the reforms are successfully implemented.

China has adjusted the 1993 strategic guideline twice. Both the 2004 and 2014 strategies emphasize integrated joint operations as the main form of operations for the PLA to conduct in the future. Each guideline is described as “enriching and improving” the previous one, indicating that the PLA views these changes to strategy as minor, not major changes. In the 2004 strategy, however, the direction of change is consistent with the argument advanced in this book—shifts in the conduct of warfare. Although the organizational reforms pursued under the 2014 strategy are far-reaching, they are intended to enable the PLA to be better able to conduct joint operations, a goal first identified in the 1993 strategic guideline.