The PLA's weaknesses: The US Perspective: Part#1

                                                                  

China has accepted the People's Liberation Army's extreme transformation in recent years (PLA). This transformation is apparent in its scope (including system, force, and innovation reforms) and in its aim to create, in the words of Xi Jinping, a "fight and win" unified power. If this transformation is successful, China's provincial neighbors and the United States may perceive that the People's Republic, whose power is now more assertive, will be encouraged even more. Effective change isn't assured; many of China's previous attempts at military transformation have failed, but Xi has close to exceptional capacity to push change.

As a result, it is realistic to anticipate this shift to succeed and to understand both its implications and how best to respond. This article investigates PLA developments and identifies flaws in China's new joint power. The major subject investigates the advancements in the Central Military Commission (CMC), the highest level of the PLA, as they relate to China's model of public decision-making and shared military relations. The next section looks at the PLA's reconstruction, with a focus on its new Strategic Support Force (SSF) and altered theater-level organization. The third part looks at the measures that might disrupt and defeat this new combined power by focusing on the flaws identified in segments one and two.

According to the report, the altered PLA would have four major flaws. To begin, the unified force will adopt a style of deeply integrated decision-making, which may prove unsuitable for the demands of major fighting missions. Second, the transformed PLA power will compete at the joint performance center level to coordinate multidomain actions. Third, the new PLA will be unable to project, retain, or order its power across the breadth of China's global advantages. Finally, the PLA is now hampered by a lack of considerable functional experience.

CMC Reform and the Nature of Chinese decision-making Even by Chinese dictator standards, Xi's decision-making is extraordinarily focused. During normal public administration, a combination of discussion, negotiating, and consensus-building was widely believed to thoroughly prepare the Chinese country. However, in times of crisis, this divided and somewhat dormant framework would frequently transform into a more unified, dictatorial framework exhibiting more prominent philosophical decision-making, articulated syndication of decision-making by senior party pioneers, and extreme compelling of any scope recently conceded to subordinates. 2 Such an emergency response was demonstrated in China's response to severe acute respiratory disease in 2003, the Sichuan territorial tremor in 2008, and, most recently, the Covid pandemic.

The most typical characteristics of an emergency order are a strict priority by the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the gathering of state media, and critical pressure placed on lower levels of the party for efficient implementation. In any event, during the Xi period, even normal public management has taken on these emergency order aspects. Xi has collected an unusually high convergence of decision-making authority across a wide range of strategy domains as CCP general secretary.

As a result, state government hardware has gotten accustomed to nearly ten years of extremely excellent order. A close relationship exists between the PLA and the CCP. According to China's National Defense Law, the PLA's commitment is to the CCP rather than China's constitution or central government. PLA officials are always party members, and a network of professionally clothed commissars exists to protect the CCP's interests. While the PLA is not directly responsible for internal security, it does play such roles when circumstances arise. Both the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square protests, for example, anticipated PLA intervention to restore party authority.

The PLA dislikes doing such tasks (because of potential reputational injury), but it is the CCP's final line of defense against instability and chaos. Despite this closeness, the CCP-PLA relationship is one of the common interests rather than mutual benefit. Over time, clearer institutional boundaries have resulted in the utilitarian separation and bifurcation of normal citizens and military elites. 3 Indeed, in 2013, a former CMC bad habit director warned that the PLA must "unfalteringly discredit and reject the incorrect political concepts of disassociating the military from the party, depoliticizing the military, and placing the military under the state."

Against this backdrop, Xi's CMC shift has attempted to strengthen political control over the PLA beyond the usually unquestionable levels found in a Leninist military. The CMC, a coordinated party and state entity, establishes a protection strategy and provides the highest degree of military order in peace and conflict. As the director, Xi reduced the CMC from 11 to 7 people, removing administration supervisors, redesigning its general offices, and delegating some functions to another Joint Staff Department.

Given the need to serve as a military base camp (the military becomes a ground force component equal to the flying corps and naval force), the CMC may focus on Xi's requirement for developing a joint power and managing both military status and missions. Not many CCP general secretaries have exercised such total control over the CMC. Without a doubt, the CMC has lately seen the executive role split from that of CCP general secretary (for a long time during the Hu Jintao era) or authority delegated to its professionally clothed CMC bad habit chairman.  Xi, on the other hand, leads through a "CMC director duty structure" in which even minor security concerns are raised to him as CMC administrator.

In general, the concept of CCP decision-making and its link to the PLA address flaws. To begin with, this integrated architecture may fail at the highest degrees of critical complexity. Most administration theories would argue that decentralized decision-making is better suited to complexity, but Xi's standardization of focused decision-making denies his machinery of government experience with decentralization and assignment. Natural and health disasters have revealed flaws in his system, and war might do the same. Any conflict with China should aim to increase the quantity and variety of critical issues that threaten the CCP's expert war administration. One option would be to sanction measures that improve internal security and force the PLA to focus its attention and resources on internal security.

Second, the complicated relationship between the CCP and the PLA may be highlighted. The two should be viewed as distinct entities; careful targeting (compounding what Joel Wuthnow portrays as idle skepticism among Xi and his tactical advisers) may aid in dividing the CCP and the PLA and reducing the broad cohesion of the Chinese order.

The PLA has made significant changes to its power structure. The military is the primary failing, having been reduced to a public level ground force on par with the naval force and air corps rather than being directly commanded by wide sections of the CMC. The Second Artillery Force (renamed the PLA Rocket Force) was also called in to assist, as it is responsible for China's land-based nuclear and conventional rockets. The final component of the underlying shift is the formation of a new Strategic Support Force to handle the data area (which in Chinese origination envelops digital; electronic fighting; knowledge, observation, and surveillance [ISR]; and space).

The SSF provides valuable insight into how China plans to direct future combat. Observing the United States military's condemnation of the major Gulf War, the PLA recognized the fundamental importance of data innovation and its coordination into a joint power. This concept flourished as "informationized neighborhood conflicts" in China's 2014 military system, with a 2015 white paper elevating data to a "primary task" rather than just an "important condition" of combat. Under this concept, the PLA aspires to lead efforts, especially in the marine and air domains, but also in the internet, space, and across the electromagnetic spectrum.