Active Defense (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics) by Fravel M. Taylor & Fravel M. Taylor

Active Defense (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics) by Fravel M. Taylor & Fravel M. Taylor

Author:Fravel, M. Taylor & Fravel, M. Taylor [Fravel, M. Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-04-22T16:00:00+00:00


6

The 1993 Strategy: “Local Wars under High-Technology Conditions”

In December 1992, the PLA’s high command convened a seminar to examine China’s military strategy. By the end of the month, a new strategic guideline had been formulated, which the CMC adopted in early January 1993, known as “winning local wars under modern especially high-technology conditions.” Unlike the 1956 and 1980 guidelines, the new strategy was not based on how to counter an invasion of Chinese territory. Instead, it emphasized how to wage wars over limited aims that would be characterized by new ways of fighting.

The strategic guideline adopted in January 1993 represents the third major change in China’s military strategy since 1949. As with the 1956 and 1980 strategies, the adoption of the 1993 strategy is also puzzling. In the early 1990s, China’s senior party and military leaders believed that China’s regional security environment was the “best ever” since 1949, owing largely to the evaporation of the Soviet threat from the north and the end of the Cold War. Yet, despite the absence of a clear threat to China’s homeland, the CMC adopted its most ambitious military strategy to date by seeking to develop the capability to conduct joint operations, in a wide range of contingencies, around its periphery.

Two factors are central to understanding when, why, and how China changed its military strategy in 1993. First, the Gulf War revealed that a significant shift in the conduct of warfare had occurred. Iraq’s rapid defeat through the use of weapons such as precision-guided munitions had a profound impact on China’s senior military officers. Although China had been tracking these shifts in warfare since the 1980s, including the 1982 Falklands War and 1986 US air strikes against Libya, the Gulf War underscored the need for a new strategy to ensure that the PLA would be prepared to fight as the conduct of warfare changed. Second, the PLA could not respond immediately to the Gulf War because of the divisions within the party leadership that emerged after the suppression of demonstrations in and around Tiananmen Square over whether and how to continue Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. The PLA also became more politicized than at any time since the end of the Cultural Revolution. Only when unity was restored at the Fourteenth Party Congress in October 1992 was the PLA able to pursue a change in strategy.

The 1993 strategy is perhaps the most important strategic guideline that the CMC has adopted since 1956. It remains the basis of China’s military strategy today, following adjustments in 2004 and 2014. Although the 1988 strategy signaled the turn to local wars, it did not outline how they would be fought. The 1993 strategy answered this question. It also affirmed the shift from the dominance of the ground forces to elevating the role of the other services, and from the modes of warfare used since the civil war—such as mobile warfare—to joint operations among the services.

This chapter unfolds in five parts. The first section demonstrates that the new strategic guideline established in January 1993 constitutes a major change in China’s national military strategy.



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