History of the People's Liberation Army

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People's Liberation Army

Components People's Liberation Army People's Liberation Army Ground Force People's Liberation Army Navy People's Liberation Army Air Force Second Artillery Corps Ranks of the Chinese Military Ranks of the People's Liberation Army Navy Ranks of the People's Liberation Army Air Force Ranks of the People's Liberation Army History of the Chinese Military Military history of China History of the People's Liberation Army

The History of the People's Liberation Army begins in 1927 with the start of the Chinese Civil War and spans to the present, developing from a peasant guerrilla force into the largest armed force in the world.

Contents 1 Origins 2 Military doctrine 3 The Ten Years Civil War 4 Second Sino-Japanese War 5 Postwar victory 6 Korean conflict 7 Modernization 8 Military Actions of the Red Army and People's Liberation Army 9 Footnotes 10 See also

[edit] Origins

The PLA traces its origins to the August 1, 1927, Nanchang Uprising in which Kuomintang (KMT) troops led by Communist Party of China leaders Zhu De and Zhou Enlai (while engaged in the Northern Expedition) rebelled following the violent dissolution of the first Kuomintang-Communist Party of China united front earlier that year. The survivors of that and other abortive communist insurrections, including the Autumn Harvest Uprising led by Mao Zedong, fled to the Jinggang Mountains along the border of Hunan and Jiangxi provinces. Joining forces under the leadership of Mao and Zhu, this collection of communists, bandits, KMT deserters, and impoverished peasants became the First Workers' and Peasants' Army, or Red Army: the military arm of the Communist Party of China.

The divisions of the "Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army" (紅軍) were named according to historical circumstances, sometimes in a nonconsecutive way. Early Communist units often formed by defection from existing Kuomintang forces, keeping their original designations. By the time of the 1934 Long March, numerous small units had been organized into three unified groups, the First Red Army (紅一方面軍/红一方面军/Hóng Yī Fāngmiàn Jūn), the Second Red Army (紅二方面軍/红二方面军/Hóng Èr Fāngmiàn Jūn) and the Fourth Red Army (紅四方面軍/红四方面军/Hóng Sì Fāngmiàn Jūn).^[1] Some translations refer to these same units as the “First Front Red Army", “Second Front Red Army” and “Fourth Front Red Army" to distinguish them from the earlier organizational divisions. The First Red Army formed from the First, Third and Fifth Army Groups in southern Kiangsi under command of Bo Gu and Li De. When the Fourth Red Army under Zhang Guotao was formed in the Szechuan-Shensi border area from several smaller units, no standard nomenclature of the armies of the Communist Party existed; moreover, during the Chinese Civil War, central control of separate Communist-controlled enclaves within China was limited. After the organization of these first two main forces, the Second Red Army formed in eastern Kweichow by unifying the Second and Sixth Army Groups under He Long and Jen Pi-shih. A “Third Red Army" was never established, and the three armies would maintain their historical denominations of First, Second and Fourth Red Armies until Communist military forces were nominally integrated into the National Revolutionary Army, forming the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, during the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945.

[edit] Military doctrine

Mao's military thought grew out of the Red Army's experiences in the late 1930s and early 1940s and formed the basis for the "people's war" concept, which became the doctrine of the Red Army and the PLA. In developing his thought, Mao drew on the works of the Chinese military strategist Sun Zi (Fourth Century B.C.) and Soviet and other theorists, as well as on the lore of peasant uprisings, such as the stories found in the classical novel Shuihu Zhuan (Water Margin) and the stories of the Taiping Rebellion. Synthesizing these influences with lessons learned from the Red Army's successes and failures, Mao created a comprehensive politico-military doctrine for waging revolutionary warfare. People's war incorporated political, economic, and psychological measures with protracted military struggle against a superior foe. As a military doctrine, people's war emphasized several components:

• the mobilization of the populace to support regular and guerrilla forces
• the primacy of men over weapons, with superior motivation compensating for inferior technology
• the three progressive phases of protracted warfare, strategic defensive, strategic stalemate, and strategic offensive, called mobile warfare

During the first stage, enemy forces were "lured in deep" into one's own territory to overextend, disperse, and isolate them. The Red Army established base areas from which to harass the enemy, but these bases and other territory could be abandoned to preserve Red Army forces. In addition, policies ordered by Mao for all soldiers to follow, the Eight Points of Attention, instructed the army to avoid harm to or disrespect for the peasants, regardless of the need for food and supplies. This policy won support for the Communists among the rural peasants.^[2] In the second phase, superior numbers and morale were applied to wear down the enemy in a war of attrition in which guerrilla operations predominated. During the final phase, Red Army forces made the transition to regular warfare as the enemy was reduced to parity and eventually defeated.

As a component of its function as the fighting arm of the Communist Party, PLA units serve a political role within their area of operations. This role evolved during the alliance with the Kuomintang, as Communists and leftist political administrators began land reform favoring peasants in the areas conquered by the Northern Expedition army in 1927. later, as part of the command structure, political commissars were appointed by the Communist Party to military units for the purpose directing political education efforts, and to ensure that Party decisions were implemented. In this system, each unit had a political officer who was not responsible to the normal military chain of command, but instead answered to a separate chain of command within the Communist Party, to ensure the loyalty of army commanders and to prevent a possible coup d'etat. The political commissar had the authority to override any decision of the military officers, and to remove them from command if necessary. However, that was almost never necessary — the mere presence of a commissar usually meant that military commanders would follow their directives, and the day-to-day duties of the political commissar generally involved only propaganda work and boosting the morale of the troops.

[edit] The Ten Years Civil War

During the 1920s, Communist activists retreated underground or to the countryside where they fomented a military revolt, beginning the Nanchang Uprising on August 1, 1927. Defecting Nationalist troops, combined with remnants of peasant rebels, and established control over several areas in southern China. Attempts by the Nationalist armies to suppress the rebellion were unsuccessful but extremely damaging to the Communist forces. This marked the beginning of the ten year's struggle, known in mainland China as the "Ten Years Civil War" (Simplified Chinese: 十年内战; pinyin: Shínían Nèizhàn).

Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek turned his attention on rooting out the Communist strongholds in central China. Using the guerrilla tactics that would later make Mao Zedong internationally famous as a military strategist, the Red Army in Jiangxi survived several encirclement and suppression campaigns by superior KMT forces. The first and second campaigns failed and the third was aborted due to the Mukden Incident. The fourth campaign (1932-1933) achieved some early successes, but Chiang’s armies were badly mauled when they tried to penetrate into the heart of Mao Zedong’s Soviet Chinese Republic. During these campaigns the Nationalist columns struck swiftly into communist areas, but were easily engulfed by the vast countryside and were not able to consolidate their foothold.

Finally in 1933 Chiang launched a fifth campaign that involved the systematic encirclement of the Jiangxi Soviet region with fortified blockhouses. By September 1933, the National Revolutionary Army had eventually completely isolated Jiangxi, with the advice and tactical assistance of his German adviser, Hans von Seeckt.^[3] Unlike in previous campaigns in which they penetrated deeply in a single strike, this time the Nationalist troops patiently built blockhouses, each separated by five or so miles, to surround the communist areas and cut off their supplies and food source. Villages in the region were organized into units known as baojia, as a security measure to prevent communists from obtaining supplies and intelligence from the locals. Once the front line had been secured, a new ring of blockhouses were built to close in on the communist base areas.

Chiang's army's initial victories in the fifth campaign cause a political furor within the Communist leadership. In spite of his prior success gainst the Kuomintang, the Soviet Union and Comintern-influenced leaders of the party distrusted the ideas of Mao, who held that the rural Chinese peasants, not the urban proletariat, were the Communist party's base. A fortified perimeter was established by Chiang's forces, and Jiangxi was besieged in an attempt to destroy the Communist forces trapped within. In July 1934, the leaders of the party, dominated by the "Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks", a militant group formed in Moscow by Wang Ming and Bo Gu, forced Mao from the Politburo of the Communist Party in Ruijin and placed him briefly under house arrest. Mao was replaced by Zhou Enlai as leader of the military commission,^[4] and the Chinese Red Army was commanded by a three man military committee, including a German military advisor Otto Braun (called in Chinese, Li De), the Comintern military advisor Bo Gu, and Zhou. The committee abandoned Mao's successful tactics of mobile warfare against the Kuomintang forces. Direct engagements with the Nationalist army soon caused heavy casualties and loss of material and territory. Mao would later write of this period:

By May 1928, basic principles of guerilla warfare, simple in nature and suited to the conditions of the time, had already been evolved...But beginning from January 1932...the old principles were no longer to be considered as regular, but were to be rejected as "guerilla-ism". The opposition to "guerilla-ism" reigned for three whole years.^[5]

In August 1934, with the Red Army depleted by the prolonged conflict, a spy placed by Zhou Enlai in the KMT army headquarters in Nanchang brought news that Chiang Kai-shek was preparing a major offensive against the Communist capital, Ruijin. The Communist leadership decided on a strategic retreat to regroup with other Communist units, and to avoid annihilation. The original plan was to link up with the Second Red Army commanded by He Long, thought to be in Hubei to the west and north. Communications between divided groups of the Red Army had been disrupted by the Kuomintang campaign, and during the planning to evacuate Jiangxi, the First Red Army was unaware that these other Communist forces were also retreating westward.

In October 1934, the communist First Red Army took advantage of gaps in the ring of blockhouses (manned by the troops of a warlord ally of Chiang Kai-shek's, rather than the Nationalists themselves) to escape Jiangxi. The warlord armies were reluctant to challenge communist forces for fear of wasting their own men, and did not pursue the communists with much fervor. In addition, the main Nationalist forces were preoccupied with annihilating Zhang Guotao's Fourth Red Army, which was much larger than Mao's. The massive military retreat of communist forces known as the Long March over a year and covered thousand of kilometers, ending when the Communist armies linked up in the interior of Shaanxi province in northwest China. Along the way, the Communist armies confiscated property and weapons from local warlords and landlords, while recruiting peasants and the poor, solidifying its appeal to the masses. Of the 80,000 people who began the Long March from the Soviet Chinese Republic, only around 7000 made it to Shaanxi, including those who joined the Red Army en route. In November 1935, the Second Red Army, led by He Long, set out on its own Long March, driven further west than the First Red Army, all the way to Lijiang in Yunnan province, then across the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain massif and through the Tibetan highlands of western Sichuan. Zhang Guotao's Fourth Red Army, which took a different route through northwest China, was largely destroyed by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and his Chinese Muslim ally, the Ma clique. The remnants of Zhang's forces eventually joined Mao in Shaanxi, but with his army destroyed, Zhang, even as a founding member of the CCP, was never able to challenge Mao's authority. The Red Army's exploits during the Long March became a potent symbol of the spirit and prowess of the Red Army and its successor, the PLA. During the Long March, Mao's political power and his strategy of guerrilla warfare gained ascendancy in the party and the Red Army and made Mao and his proteges the undisputed leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mao wrote in 1935:

The Long March is a manifesto. It has proclaimed to the world that the Red Army is an army of heroes, while the imperialists and their running dogs, Chiang Kai-shek and his like, are impotent. It has proclaimed their utter failure to encircle, pursue, obstruct and intercept us. The Long March is also a propaganda force. It has announced to some 200 million people in eleven provinces that the road of the Red Army is their only road to liberation.^[6]

[edit] Second Sino-Japanese War

In 1937 the Red Army joined in a second united front with the KMT against the invading Japanese army in the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Red Army was nominally integrated into the Chinese national army forming the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army units. Although nominally cooperating with the KMT, the Communist Party of China used the Red Army to expand its influence while leading the anti-Japanese resistance in north China. By the end of the war, the Red Army numbered approximately 1 million and was backed by a militia of 2 million. Although the Red Army fought several conventional battles against the Japanese (and KMT troops), guerrilla operations were the primary mode of warfare.

[edit] Postwar victory

In the civil war following Japan's defeat in World War II, the Red Army, newly renamed the People's Liberation Army, again used the principles of people's war in following a policy of strategic withdrawal, waging a war of attrition, and abandoning cities and communication lines to the well-armed, numerically superior KMT forces. In 1947 the PLA launched a counteroffensive during a brief strategic stalemate. By the next summer, the PLA had entered the strategic offensive stage, using conventional warfare as the KMT forces went on the defensive and then collapsed rapidly on the mainland in 1949. By 1950 the PLA had seized Hainan Island and Tibet.

When the PLA became a national armed force with the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, it was an unwieldy, 5-million-strong peasant army. In 1950 the PLA included 10,000 troops in the People's Liberation Army Air Force (founded in 1949) and 60,000 in the People's Liberation Army Navy (founded in 1950). The PRC also claimed a militia of 5.5 million. During the 1950s, the PLA with Soviet help transformed itself from a peasant army into a more modern one. At that time, demobilization of ill-trained or politically unreliable troops began, resulting in the reduction of military strength to 2.8 million in 1953.

[edit] Korean conflict

In December 1951, the PVA or People's Volunteer Army intervened in the Korean War as United Nations forces under General Douglas MacArthur approached the Yalu River. Under the weight of this offensive, Chinese forces captured Seoul, but were subsequently pushed back to a line roughly straddling the 38th Parallel. The war ended as a standstill in 1953. In 1962, the PLA also fought to a standstill against India in the 1962 Sino-Indian War.

[edit] Modernization

Establishment of a professional military force equipped with modern weapons and doctrine was the last of the "Four Modernizations" announced by Zhou Enlai and supported by Deng Xiaoping. In keeping with Deng's mandate to reform, the PLA has demobilized millions of men and women since 1978 and has introduced modern methods in such areas as recruitment and manpower, strategy, and education and training. In 1979, the PLA fought Vietnam in the Sino-Vietnamese War.

In the 1980s, the PRC shrunk its military considerably on the theory that freeing up resources for economic development was in the PRC's interest.

Following the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, ideological correctness was temporarily revived as the dominant theme in Chinese military affairs. Reform and modernization appear to have since resumed their position as the PLA's priority objectives, although the armed forces' political loyalty to the Communist Party of China remains a leading concern. One other area of concern to the political leadership was the PLA's involvement in civilian economic activities. Concern that these activities were adversely impacting PLA readiness has led the political leadership to attempt to remove the PLA's business empire.

Beginning in the 1980s, the PLA tried to transform itself from a land-based power, centered on a vast ground force, to a smaller, mobile, high-tech military capable of mounting defensive operations beyond its coastal borders. The motivation for this was that a massive land invasion by Russia is no longer seen as a major threat, and the new threats to the PRC are seen to be a declaration of independence by Taiwan, possibly with assistance from the United States, or a confrontation over the Spratly Islands. In addition, the economic center of gravity of mainland China has shifted from the interior to the coastal regions and the PRC is now more dependent on trade than it has been in the past. Furthermore, the possibility of a militarily resurgent Japan remains a worry to the Chinese military leadership.

The PRC's power projection capability is limited; one Chinese general has characterized China's military as having "short arms and weak legs". There has however been an effort to redress these deficiencies in recent years. The PLA has acquired some advanced weapons systems, including Sovremenny class destroyers, Sukhoi Su-27 and Sukhoi Su-30 aircraft, and Kilo-class diesel submarines from Russia. It is also currently building 4 new destroyers including 2 AAW Type 052C class guided missile destroyers. However, the mainstay of the air force continues to be the 1960s-vintage J-7 fighter. In addition, the PLA has attempted to build an indigenous aerospace and military industry with its production of the J-10, which currently is in production. It reportedly contains technology supplied by Israel from its Lavi fighter program as well as technology reverse-engineered from an F-16 reportedly given to the PRC by Pakistan. The PLA launched a new class of nuclear submarine on December 3, 2004 capable of launching nuclear warheads that could strike targets across the Pacific Ocean.

China's military leadership has also been reacting to the display of American military might during the Gulf War and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq .

During the 1980s and 1990s, the PLA became extensively involved in creating a business empire including companies in areas not normally associated with the military (i.e., travel and real estate). Much of the motivation for this was to supplement the PLA's normal budget, whose growth was restricted. Chairman Mao's belief that people and groups should be self-sufficient also played a role in the PLA's varied business interests. In the early 1990s, the leadership of the Communist Party and the high command of the PLA became alarmed that these business transactions were in conflict with the PLA's military mission. The business interests of the PLA were eroding military discipline, and there were reports of corruption resulting from the PLA businesses. As a result, the PLA was ordered to spin off its companies. Typically, the actual management of the companies did not change, but the officers involved were retired from active duty within the PLA and the companies were given private boards of retired PLA officers. Military units were compensated for the loss of profitable businesses with increased state funding.

[edit] Military Actions of the Red Army and People's Liberation Army

• The Ten Years Civil War between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang:

• August 1, 1927: Nanchang Uprising, marking the first battle of the Chinese Red Army
• 1927: Autumn Harvest Uprising
• 1927: Guangzhou Uprising
• Kuomintang campaigns against the Jiangxi Soviet:

• November 1930 to December 1931: First Encirclement Campaign
• April to May 1931: Second Encirclement Campaign
• July 1931: Third Encirclement Campaign
• December 1932 to March 1933: Fourth Encirclement Campaign
• September 1933 to October 1934: Fifth Encirclement Campaign

• 1934-1936: The Long March, a strategic retreat to avoid destruction by the Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-shek
• 1935: Battle at the Luding Bridge

• 1937 to 1945: Second Sino-Japanese War

• September 25, 1937: The Battle of Pingxingguan
• January 1940: The New Fourth Army Incident
• August-December 1940: The Hundred Regiments Offensive

• 1945 to 1950: Chinese Civil War against the Kuomintang:

• September 10, 1945 to October 12, 1945 - Shangdang Campaign
• October 22, 1945 to November 2, 1945 - Handan Campaign
• December 17, 1946 to April 1, 1947 - Linjiang Campaign
• May 13, 1947 to July 1, 1947 - Summer Offensive of 1947 in Northeast China
• September 14, 1947 to November 5, 1947 - Autumn Offensive of 1947 in Northeast China
• December 15, 1947 to March 15, 1948 - Winter Offensive of 1947 in Northeast China
• May 23, 1948 to October 19, 1948 - Siege of Changchun
• September 12, 1948 to November 12, 1949 - Liaoshen Campaign
• October 7, 1948 to November 15, 1948 - Battle of Jinzhou
• November 6, 1948 to January 10, 1949 - Huaihai Campaign
• November 29, 1948 to January 31, 1949 - Pingjin Campaign
• October 25, 1949 to October 27, 1949 - Battle of Kuningtou
• November 3, 1949 to November 5, 1949 - Battle of Denbu Island
• March 3, 1950 to March 3, 1950 - Battle of Nan'ao Island
• May 12, 1950 to June 2, 1950 - Shanghai Campaign
• May 25, 1950 to August 7, 1950 - Wanshan Archipelago Campaign
• August 9, 1950 to August 9, 1950 - Battle of Nanpéng Island

• 1952 to 1996: Taiwan Strait conflicts with the Republic of China (Taiwan):

• April 11, 1952 to April 15, 1952 - Battle of Nanri Island
• September 20, 1952 to October 20, 1952: Battle of Nanpēng Archipelago
• August 1954 to May 1955: The First Taiwan Strait Crisis

• January 18, 1955 to January 20, 1955: Battle of Yijiangshan Islands

• August 23 to October 6, 1958: Second Taiwan Strait Crisis
• July 21, 1995 to March 23, 1996: Third Taiwan Strait Crisis

• Tibet

• October 19, 1950: The reoccupation of Tibet
• 1956 to 1959: Suppression of the uprising in Tibet
• September 30, 2006: The Nangpa La shootings

• December 1951 to 1953: Korean War (under the official banner of the Chinese People's Volunteers, although they are PLA regulars)
• October 1962 to November 1962: Sino-Indian War
• 1969 to 1978: Sino-Soviet border conflict
• January 17 to January 19, 1974: Battle of Hoang Sa, a sea battle with the South Vietnamese Navy near the disputed Xisha Islands
• February 17 to March 16, 1979: Sino-Vietnamese War
• 1986: Border skirmishes with Vietnam
• June 3 to June 4. 1989: The Tiananmen Square protests, soldiers and tanks from the 27th and 28th PLA assaulted unarmed protesters
• April 1, 2006: Hainan Island incident, a Chinese PLAN jet intercepting a US Navy reconaissance aircraft collides and is lost and the US aircraft is detained

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] See also

Naval history of China