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18 Armed Forces & Soc'y 7 (1991-1992)

handle is hein.journals/amdfcsad18 and id is 1 raw text is: The People's Liberation Army and China's Crisis A. JAMES GREGOR Since the suppression of the democracy movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) in June 1989, a great deal of speculation has collected around the present circumstances and the future role of the Chinese military. Even the most competent commentators on Chinese military affairs have significantly revised their assessments of the decade- long progressive depoliticization and increasing professionalization of the People's Liberation Army.1 The crisis that settled down on China in spring 1989 marked a watershed in the history of the PLA. Until the authorities in Beijing chose to use the PLA to suppress dissent with armed force, Western authorities appeared convinced that the Communist Chinese military was being increasingly depoliticized. Prior to June 1989, we were told that politicization of the military has dropped dramatically.2 The Chinese armed forces, it was argued, had embraced the Western model of military modernization. That was understood to mean that the military in China was to be apolitical and professional. The evidence cited included the report that as of 1980, enrollment by Communist party members in military units had been halted and that vacancies in PLA command positions were to be filled only by the graduates of military academies rather than through simple political appointments. It was argued that there had been a dramatic decline in the amount of time spent by the military in political training as distinct from improving military proficiency. The time allotted to political train- ing in the PLA had been reduced from 40 percent in the 1960s to 20 percent in the early 1980s.3 A. JAMES GREGOR is professor of political science and principal investigator for the Pacific Basin Project of the Institute for International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of 14 books, including Arming the Dragon: U.S. Security Ties with the People's Republic of China (Washington, D.C., 1987). Address for Correspond- ence: Professor A. James Gregor, Department of Political Science, University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley, CA 94720. ARMED FORCES & SOCIETY, Vol. 18 No. 1, Fall 1991, pp. 7-28.

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