Chinese Warfighting The PLA Experience Since 1949 - (1. Introduction Patterns of PLA Warfighting)

1
Introduction
Patterns of PLA Warfighting
Mark A. Ryan, David M. Finkelstein, and Michael A. McDevitt
Toward an Operational History of the PLA Since 1949

During the 1990s the modernization of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as a
growing field of research interest in the West seemed to take off—especially in the United
States.
The increasing interest in current Chinese military issues was likely fueled by a confluence
of factors: a general interest in the observable and clear progress the PLA is making in
transforming itself into a more capable and professional institution; the rise and coming of age
of a new generation of U.S. scholars with skill sets that included Chinese language proficiency
coupled with an intense interest in security issues; the arrival onto the research scene of a
generation of retiring U.S. military officers who had spent a good deal of their professional
lives as China specialists; and, of course, a more general interest in the phenomenon of “rising
China” as a modernizing nation-state.1 As a result, there is an ever-growing body of literature
on Chinese military modernization and defense policy that runs from the strategic to the
tactical levels of analysis.2
Whereas the literature on contemporary Chinese military issues has seemed to flourish,
Copyright © 2002. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
solid operational histories of the PLA’s warfighting experiences, especially since 1949, have
not quite kept up. There are many reasons for this. First and foremost has been a paucity of
primary source data—the basic requirement for serious historical research. Without access to
the archives of the PLA, serious historical research is difficult, if not impossible. Second, the
language barrier, as ever, would be an obstacle for many professional military historians even
if access to sources were possible. Finally, it is generally difficult to draw professionally trained
historians into work on operational-level military histories. Consequently, while there are now
more and more histories of Chinese strategic behavior since 1949 available, there is still a
relative dearth of operational-level military histories—histories that examine the PLA’s
application of the operational art at the campaign and tactical levels of warfare as distinct
from strategic-level histories that examine why China has in the past decided to wage war or
enter into conflicts.
Ryan, Mark A., et al. Chinese Warfighting: the PLA Experience Since 1949, Taylor & Francis Group, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ksu/detail.action?docID=4517031.
Created from ksu on 2020-07-25 10:19:41.
But even this situation has started to change. Since the mid to late 1990s we have witnessed
the slow but steady emergence of new military histories of the PLA. This may be viewed as a
function of four key factors. First, a new generation of historians is taking an interest in
China’s foreign and security policies during the Cold War, which has led in some cases to an
examination of the use of the PLA as an instrument of national policy. In many cases these
individuals are professionally trained historians originally from mainland China who have
studied at, and now teach at, universities and colleges in the United States. Second, some of
these scholars, who obviously have no language barrier to overcome, have been able to secure
limited access to some primary source data, some from mainland China and some from Russia
since the demise of the Soviet Union. Third, in China itself, the passage of time has resulted in
the publication of numerous memoirs of key veteran Chinese military commanders, especially
those who fought in Korea.3 Finally, over the past fifteen years the PLA itself has begun to
publish some official campaign histories and may have recently begun to pay greater attention
to modern archival methods for preserving the basic grist of future historical studies.4
In spite of these strides there is still a dearth of solid historical narratives or analyses in
English of the operational experiences of the PLA since 1949. This is strange indeed, for since
the founding of the People’s Republic of China the PLA has engaged in three major wars—in
Korea (1950–53), against India (1962), and in Vietnam (1979)—as well as multiple operations
against the Soviets, in the Taiwan Strait, in the South China Sea, and on its border with
Vietnam after the 1979 war. As a consequence of the paucity of historical treatments,
contemporary studies of Chinese military modernization have lacked the benefit of context in
which to place ongoing reforms, non-China specialists have had few places to turn to for a
basic overview of the operational history of the PLA since 1949, and students of Chinese
military affairs have been hard pressed to identify both operational continuities and
operational changes in the PLA for lack of a panoramic overview that focuses on warfighting.
In view of the new possibilities for research, the new talent in the field of Chinese history
and military and diplomatic affairs, as well as the niche that needed to be filled, The CNA
Corporation’s Asian security studies center, Project Asia, convened a two-day academic
conference in June 1999 to explore the operational history of the Chinese People’s Liberation
Army since 1949. For two days, a group of very talented scholars from universities and
research institutes in the United States and beyond met at The CNA Corporation in
Alexandria, Virginia, to present their findings on the post-1949 warfighting legacies of the
PLA.
The chapters in this volume are derived from that conference. They focus on the major
combat episodes of the PLA since the Second Civil War against the Nationalists. They span the
years across the 1950–53 Korean War, the Taiwan Strait crises of the 1950s, the 1962 Sino-
Indian War, the 1969 Sino-Soviet border clashes, and the 1979 border war with Vietnam. They
are bracketed by Paul Godwin’s overview of the fifty-year evolution of PLA military doctrine
and overviews of the PLA Navy and PLA Air Force “at war” by Alexander Huang and
Xiaoming Zhang.
While this volume cannot provide a comprehensive history of PLA warfighting over the
last half-century, as a body of scholarship its chapters do offer a rich trove of information and
insights by an unusual mix of astute and capable scholars. Many of the chapters are solidly
grounded in fresh Chinese archival sources and provide extremely useful data and
bibliographic leads for those who hunger for historical detail and deeper understanding of the
legacies of the operational art in China post-1949.
Readers will properly draw their own conclusions from this collection. In some cases more
questions will be raised than answered. But at the end of the day we hope that this volume
will at least serve as a vehicle for continued dialogue and debate, and especially inspire future
scholarship.
The remainder of this introductory chapter will present the editors’ own comments on a
number of overarching patterns suggested by the chapters. It will touch on points of
convergence and common understanding among the authors but will not ignore areas of
disagreement or historical anomalies. As we surveyed the expanse of issues addressed by the
chapter authors, eight thematic areas readily emerged:
1. operational planning;
2. command and control;
3. the linkage between fighting and politics;
4. operational design, combat tactics, and performance;
5. technological issues and doctrinal flexibility;
6. the role of Mao Zedong;
7. operational scale and typology of fighting;
8. deterrence.
The final section of this chapter will address the general issue of the importance and
applicability of studying the history of the PLA.
Intricate Planning and Preparation

It is difficult to exaggerate the degree of intensity involved in PLA planning and preparation
for military operations. This comes across in most of the chapters but is most pronounced in
He Di’s superb treatment of the planning in 1949 and 1950 for the unrealized invasion of
Taiwan and in the account of the 1962 Sino-Indian War co-written by Cheng Feng and Larry
M. Wortzel.
He Di shows that Mao Zedong and Su Yu, his lead planner for the Taiwan invasion, were
cautious after the shocking failures of the attempted landings against the islands of Jinmen
(Quemoy) and Dengbu in October 1949. Su Yu carefully evaluated the potential for American
involvement but also the military and political limits of any U.S. intervention. The sudden
need for joint air, sea, and land operations presented novel challenges, but Su Yu and his staff
immersed themselves in the finances and logistics of building up shipping tonnage and air
support for the crossing and produced a series of increasingly refined invasion plans. This
problem of joint operations, which is also traced in the Godwin chapter, remained
troublesome over the decades and persists into the present era. The single successful PLA joint
operation, the seizure of Yijiangshan Island in 1955 described in Xiaobing Li’s chapter on the
1950s Taiwan Strait crises, remains an important inspirational example for the PLA, but it was
small in scale and of uncertain relevance.5
The PLA occupation of Hainan Island in May 1950 triggered a reconsolidation of the
defense of Taiwan by the Kuomintang (KMT), as 70,000 Nationalist troops retreated from
Hainan and another 120,000 were withdrawn from the Zhoushan Islands. Su Yu and his staff
went back to the drawing board now looking at a Taiwan defended by 400,000. The need to
assemble even more resources and troops meant new and more complex planning
reiterations, and the invasion was reset for the summer of 1951. With the outbreak of the
Korean War in June 1950 the situation changed once more as the interposition of the U.S.
Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait forced another postponement, to 1952. But this change
proved more enduring and marked, in He Di’s phrase, the “emergence of the Taiwan
problem” that would so bedevil Sino-American relations. The intense, detailed, and expensive
planning for the invasion reflected the fixation of the Chinese leadership with Taiwan. The
requirements for an invasion of Taiwan in the present era appear fundamentally the same as
those faced by Mao and Su Yu, even given modern advances in intelligence, information and
electronic warfare, missile technology, and so forth. In this sense He Di’s study is startlingly
relevant.
Planning preceding the 1962 war with India was likewise remarkable for its duration and
comprehensive nature. Cheng and Wortzel document the Chinese assumption of a war with
India years beforehand and the formulation of a longterm program of preparations, including
road building along adjacent borders in harsh and remote regions of Tibet and Xinjiang,
stockpiling of weapons and supplies, mapping, and acclimatization of troops for the extreme
Himalayan altitudes. India did none of this and suffered a quick, sharp defeat despite lesser
logistical obstacles. The careful, almost obsessive, planning by the Chinese carried over to the
fighting, as PLA troop deployments and maneuvers were precisely scheduled and mapped out
down to the smallest units.
Command and Control: Tension Between Centralization and Field

Autonomy
Mao Zedong emerged in the 1930s as the leading military theoretician, organizer, and
commander of the PLA, but given the scale and geographic expanse of operations against the
Nationalists and Japanese, and the relative isolation of the separate PLA armies, field
commanders and officers enjoyed considerable autonomy in devising local operational plans
and conducting campaigns to achieve centrally directed strategic objectives. By the late 1940s,
therefore, the PLA had a large corps of able, experienced, and self-reliant officers. However,
with victory in 1948 and 1949, conditions changed such that Mao and the core leadership were
now able to exercise operational control more tightly from the center.
The resulting tensions between central and field command fully surfaced during the Korean
War. Shu Guang Zhang argues in his essay that Mao’s heavy-handed micromanagement from
Beijing at the expense of his commander on the ground in Korea, Peng Dehuai, was disruptive
and risky, and cost the Chinese heavily in lives. Prior to the mid-1951 stalemate along the 38th
Parallel, during the PLA’s “Five Campaigns,” Mao continually and abruptly modified Peng’s
plans using a stream of telegraph message traffic, or overrode them entirely and substituted
his own. Peng’s approach to the war was markedly cautious and conservative, and arguably
more realistic compared to Mao’s. Mao constantly pressed Peng to push the offensives and
inflict more casualties on U.S./UN forces at the cost of very sizable casualties among the
“Chinese People’s Volunteers,” the exhaustion of his troops, and creation of dangerously
stretched lines. At some points Peng was able to dissuade Mao or tone down his ambitions for
the campaigns, but overall Mao dominated and was, as Zhang puts it, “obsessed with his self-
image as the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] ultimate commander-in-chief of military
affairs.”6
Zhang concludes that the Chinese were severely handicapped by a carryover of a pre–
Korean War style of “personalization” of informal command relationships. This style may have
worked reasonably well for the PLA during the long and often chaotic Civil War, but was less
useful in Korea, where the technology of warfare was more modern and mechanized, the “ops
tempo” much quicker, where the terrain was suddenly unfamiliar, and where long supply and
communications lines were subject to constant stress, interdiction, and interruption.
This problem of personalized and overly centralized command and control complicated
Chinese military and political affairs well beyond the Korean War. Zhang Aiping, for example,
the local commander during the 1954–55 operations to recover the Dachen Islands (and later
defense minister), suffered the same type of interference but managed to buck Beijing over
the timing of his assault. The 1962 Sino-Indian War, on the other hand, appears as the best
example of balance between centralized strategic direction and operational autonomy in the
field. Cheng and Wortzel find that “strategic direction and policy-making in the border war
were highly centralized within China’s core leadership, but in the field the PLA depended on
the initiative of commanders at all levels. Thus, despite the tight control from the top, combat
leaders were granted a great deal of flexibility in operational and tactical command.” But
during the 1969 border clashes with the Soviet Union, according to Thomas Robinson, an
overly rigid hierarchy and chain of command again hurt the PLA. It remains unclear to what
extent the varying evidence derives from differences in the command styles from war to war
or from differences in historiographical interpretation.
Intimate Connection Between Fighting and Politics

There is near total agreement among the contributors regarding the consistent integration of
PLA combat with the larger political purposes at stake, and the consistent primacy of the
political over the purely military consideration. This fundamental principle is clearly reflected,
for example, in the campaigns late in the Second Civil War. Wortzel finds much to admire in
the military execution and operational art of the 1948–49 Beiping-Tianjin Campaign, but he
also stresses the Communist awareness of the importance of the economic, political, and
psychological elements of national power. The propaganda machine was running at full power
concurrent with combat, and great pride was taken in the fact that Beiping (soon renamed
Beijing) was induced to surrender short of a destructive battle.
The command tensions between Mao Zedong and Peng Dehuai during the Korean War
cited above likewise may be explained at least in part by Mao’s concern with the larger
strategic and international repercussions of Korean battlefield developments. Mao appeared
willing to gamble militarily for purposes of political and psychological advantage. His
decisions in this sphere often seem intuitive and pitched to the long-term, and are therefore
difficult to pin down and judge with any exactitude or finality. To this day, in Chinese eyes, the
Korean War is considered a great Chinese military victory because the mighty United States
had been checked and pushed back down below the 38th Parallel. It is uncertain, however,
whether this outcome could have been reached without the horrendous sacrifices incurred,
especially in the later, militarily dubious, campaigns forced by Mao.7
Another more specific example from Korea, involving Zhou Enlai, is also telling, but from
the angle of controlling the escalation of the war. As related in Xiaoming Zhang’s chapter, in
February 1952 Zhou personally called off a PLA Air Force bombing mission aimed at Kimpo
airfield near Seoul only minutes before takeoff. Zhou’s concern was not to upset an implicit
mutual understanding that U.S. bombing would not extend beyond the Yalu River onto
Chinese territory by introducing Chinese bombing south of the 38th Parallel.
During the 1954–55 Taiwan Strait crisis, Chinese forces took great pains to confine their
operations and engagements to Nationalist forces and avoid any clashes with U.S. forces
patrolling very nearby. This was militarily prudent but also political in design, since a main
Chinese goal during this period was “to continue the civil war without disturbing the Cold
War.”8 A similar intimate connection between fighting and politics can be traced for the 1958
Strait crisis, and for the major fighting of 1962, 1969, and 1979.
For the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict, however, Thomas Robinson, the unabashed
contrarian among the contributors, finds an entirely negative political-military nexus. In his
view Mao was led into this reckless misadventure by a combination of domestic political
concerns flowing from the Cultural Revolution and gross geopolitical miscalculations,
resulting in decades-long damage to his nation in the process. Ten years later, in 1979, the
primary and openly stated strategic objective of China’s incursion into Vietnam was to “teach
Hanoi a lesson.” The PLA’s poor operational performance in that conflict, however, led third-
party observers at the time to conclude that China, not Vietnam, was the party receiving the
lesson. Nevertheless Henry Kenny’s original research indicates quite clearly that the intended
message in fact registered strongly with the Vietnamese.
All of the above episodes raise the question, unanswered, of what criteria serve as the basis
for a Chinese assessment of victory or defeat.
Combat Tactics and Performance

By the time the war against Japan was coming to a close on the eve of the Second Civil War
(1945–49) the PLA was well on its way to transforming itself from a highly dispersed force
employing guerrilla tactics and operations in enemy rear areas into a conventionally organized
military force determined to conduct conventional operations against the KMT. The
fascinating story of that transformation deserves further study.
As characterized by Wortzel, who touches on the issue, the transformation was relatively
swift and remarkably successful. All things considered, the PLA adapted quickly to new
operational challenges. These included: moving and directing armies now numbering in the
hundreds of thousands, managing complex logistics and sustainability requirements, and
incorporating new weapons systems such as armor and even motorized transport for the first
time as both Japanese and KMT equipment found its way into the PLA arsenal, either through
capture or enemy defections.
It was under these changing strategic, operational, tactical, and material conditions that Mao
issued his famous “Ten Basic Combat Principles” during a meeting of the Central Committee
held at Yangjiakou in December 1947.9 The basic military principles worked out by Mao, and
the tactical “style” the PLA had developed by the end of the Civil War in 1949, were
essentially retained for nearly the next three decades. While the following list is by no means
exhaustive or all-inclusive, the case studies in this volume suggest some of the more enduring
characteristics of that tactical and operational style, including:
• the use of deception and surprise whenever possible, from the small-unit tactical level up
to the national strategic level; in battle confusing, luring, and trapping the enemy is a
PLA hallmark;
• a preference for mobile operations and maneuver, with a corresponding distaste for static
point defense;
• the primacy of offensive operations over defensive operations;
• focus on “battles of annihilation”—that is, the destruction of enemy combat units is
preferable to seizing and holding terrain;
• the employment of superior force, both in firepower and numbers, whenever possible at
the point of attack; also, the selected point of attack is usually the enemy’s weakest point;
• in connection with the above, a stress on massing artillery fires for shock value as well as
destructive power;
• a predilection for night fighting and nighttime movement of forces;
• a general toughness and tenacity in battle, and a willingness to absorb heavy losses when
deemed necessary.
In some of the case studies in this volume these characteristics and tactical traits proved to
be quite effective. In others they achieved either mixed results or were employed to no avail.
Korea, for example, presents a mixed picture. The surreptitious entry of some 260,000
Chinese People’s Volunteers across the Yalu River into North Korea was a spectacular piece of
military deception. It achieved psychological shock and bought the Chinese valuable time in
the early stages of their clash with U.S. and other United Nations Command (UNC) forces. The
Yalu River crossing is notorious among Western historians as a stinging American intelligence
failure. From a Chinese perspective it underscored the correctness of Mao’s dictum that no
operation should be joined without careful preparation. Shu Guang Zhang documents just
how precise Mao and the PLA were in their planning, and especially in PLA efforts to avoid
detection.
However, in spite of the initial confusion and casualties the PLA was able to impose upon
U.S. and UNC forces, the PLA found that its ability to fully exploit its operations by “cutting
up” (isolating) and decisively destroying enemy units was difficult or unattainable because of
the much greater defensive firepower they faced and the equally impressive retrograde that
was conducted. A U.S. Marine battalion might be temporarily isolated and surrounded in
fierce nighttime fighting, but rarely could it be overwhelmed, and PLA casualties became
grossly disproportionate to the initial advantages it should have enjoyed. In general, the
operational and tactical “style” that had swept Mao and the PLA into power in China did not
always transfer well in Korea because of greater enemy firepower, less familiar terrain, less
mechanized mobility compared to the enemy, overextended supply lines and logistical
difficulties, and the lack of air-ground support and air interdiction enjoyed by the enemy.
In India in 1962, with smaller forces involved, more carefully prepared logistics, and more
evenly matched firepower, the PLA successfully applied its hallmark tactics. These included
intensive maneuver around static enemy (Indian) positions and staying focused on “cutting
up” enemy units, followed by the concentration of superior force for piecemeal destruction. In
combination with tactical deceptions, such as broadcasts advertising false positions, and larger
strategic deceptions in the form of apparent diplomatic moves toward détente prior to
initiation of hostilities, the integrated Chinese war plan yielded the most clear-cut, “textbook”
PLA victory ever outside of Chinese territory.
Not surprisingly, when it comes to naval warfare and air warfare, the Chinese experience,
as outlined by our authors, suggests that these two services had to be much more innovative
than the ground forces. Among many reasons for this were the lack of any practical historical
experiences to draw upon and the relative weakness of those services in terms of ships,
aircraft, and weapons. For both the PLA Navy and Air Force the case studies presented in this
volume suggest that the guerrilla tradition of the PLA had much to offer these two fledgling
services.
In the area of maritime operations one comes away with a sense that the PLA Navy
adopted “guerrilla warfare at sea” and a naval version of People’s War in order to compensate
for its disadvantages in modern capital ships during the sporadic, long-running naval combat
with Taiwan. Alexander Huang provides much fascinating detail on this score, including:
accounts of secret movement of torpedo boats by hiding them from radar behind larger
commercial ships; precisely choreographed swarming and “cutting up” tactics by many
smaller gunboats and torpedo boats against larger but fewer Taiwan Navy warships; carefully
prepared ambushes at sea; and repeated nighttime engagements. The PLA Air Force,
according to Xiaoming Zhang, likewise practiced swarming larger numbers of fighters against
smaller numbers of isolated enemy fighters and worked on tactics to bait and lure enemy
formations into such traps.
Back on the ground, the PLA learned early on the critical role that artillery plays in
conventional warfare. In the later stages of the Civil War the PLA finally gained access to a
good deal of artillery, much of it captured from the Nationalists, oftentimes along with their
trained crews. The PLA, like the Soviets, became adept in the employment of artillery and
favored it afterward. In Korea a massive, dug-in artillery buildup along the 38th Parallel after
mid 1951 offset the UNC’s control of the air and was a key operational factor in establishing a
military stalemate there. Artillery was a chief tool during both crises in the Taiwan Strait in
the 1950s, and artillery figured prominently in the fighting of 1962 (India), 1969 (against the
Soviets), and 1979 (against Vietnam). The role of artillery in 1979, as shown by Kenny, was
particularly crucial as PLA units were being badly chewed up along their invasion routes into
Vietnam. The PLA’s use of large-scale artillery barrages provided operational-level covering
fires that allowed maneuver units to either extricate themselves from untenable situations or
press forward toward their objectives.
The overall record of PLA toughness, bravery, and sacrifice in battle, whether the fighting
was going well or badly, cannot be doubted. Once committed to battle, the PLA simply fought
very hard, whether in urban warfare, such as in Tianjin in 1948–49 and Lang Son in 1979,
through the bitter winter of 1950–51 in Korea, or after tortuous feats of forced marches over
Himalayan topography in 1962. The Chinese endured terrific losses during the Five Campaigns
in Korea but persisted and achieved the stalemate. During the month-long hyperviolent
plunge into Vietnam in 1979, they may have suffered one-fourth killed among the 100,000 or
so troops sent into combat, but they still pressed the attack and inflicted almost as many
casualties on the Vietnamese. The PLA also suffered heavy losses while winning battles, such
as the 50 percent casualty rate in the relatively quick and clean 1955 seizure of Yijiangshan
Island.
Certainly the PLA itself would attribute this tenacity in battle to what they refer to as
“political work among grass roots units.” Indeed, the tradition of the assiduous political
indoctrination of the soldiers of the “Chinese Red Army” stretches back to the late 1920s, as
does the placement of political commissars throughout the chain of command (a practice that
persists today). However, there is likely more at work here than just “correct politics.” The
sense conveyed by these chapters is that the toughness of the PLA soldier and the martial
spirit of the PLA go beyond the ideological to the larger intangibles of leadership, the
sociology of small unit cohesion, and harnessed patriotic emotion. These issues, clearly beyond
the scope of this study, deserve more future attention.
Technological Catch-up, Adaptability, and Doctrinal Flexibility

As broadly traced in Paul Godwin’s chapter and evident in other chapters, the PLA has been
forced to play a continual game of catch-up in the field of arms procurement and military
technology—especially vis-à-vis the United States and the (former) Soviet Union. This
unending struggle has resulted in a keen PLA appreciation for the value and necessity of
possessing cutting-edge military capabilities. It has also led the PLA to place a premium on
invention and adaptability in tactics, paralleled by a distinct doctrinal flexibility, and a self-
described reliance on superior “stratagem” (moulue).
“People’s War,” along with the related Maoist mantra of the ultimate primacy of man over
weapons, no matter how advanced, are well-known staples of the PLA’s institutional
traditions. This, however, was a function of necessity, not choice. The PLA has always tried to
modernize its arms as far as possible, whether by capture (as in the Civil War), by purchase
(from the Soviet Union, then the United States, then Russia again), or by indigenous
manufacture (many attempts and examples, with a decidedly mixed record of success).
Mao’s decision to enter Korea, for example, was made with the full realization of how
badly the PLA would be outgunned, and strenuous efforts were made to redress the
imbalance as far as possible with fast arms transfers from the Soviet Union. In an
extraordinary telegram sent to Stalin on October 2, 1950, Mao described in detail the
firepower of a typical American corps (comprised of approximately three divisions) compared
to that of a Chinese army (also three divisions). He calculated the numbers of guns and troops
needed to offset the disadvantage, and strongly implied that effective action against U.S. and
UNC forces would have to await delivery of Soviet weapons.10 Ultimately, Mao ordered his
troops to cross the Yalu River before Soviet arms shipments could be mounted, and paid the
price. By mid 1951, however, a rough parity in artillery and heavy armor had been achieved
through large-scale but costly Soviet aid.
Gaining parity in the air during the Korean War proved more difficult and complicated. As
Xiaoming Zhang shows, with the acquisition of large numbers of Soviet MiGs and other
aircraft the Chinese became an air power almost overnight but remained a crucial step behind
the United States throughout the war. The original PLA Air Force strategy for Korea called for
close air support of PLA ground forces; the inability to execute this primary airpower mission
was a major factor in the failure of the later ground campaigns. The MiG-15 was a very
capable fighter, but it had a short range and could not be refueled in the air, and the lack of
bases closer to the front precluded a fight with American F-86s for control of the air over the
battlefield. The PLA Air Force also discovered that intensive pilot training was as important as
advanced fighter technology, but that such training could not be pushed too fast. At the same
time, however, the PLA Air Force fought aggressively for control of airspace over the Yalu
River and, once an armistice was anticipated, it systematically rotated pilots through a training
and combat cycle in Korea to form cadres of experienced aviators for future contingencies.
Finally, the PLA Air Force used Korea to establish the fundamentals and tradition of a
formidable air defense of China proper.
The pattern of catch-up in the air continued in the late 1950s and 1960s. During the 1958
Taiwan Strait crisis, for example, PLA Air Force MiG-17s skirmished with U.S. F-84Gs flown
by Nationalist pilots. However, the United States responded with deployments of more
advanced F-100s and F-104s. And when the Chinese built up their air defenses in areas
adjacent to Vietnam in the late 1960s, its MiG-19s and 21s (and their corresponding indigenous
Jian-6s and 7s) were inferior to the top-line U.S. fighters such as the F-4. Consequently, the
PLA Air Force (PLAAF) had trouble dealing with incursions into its airspace.
The PLA tried to compensate for technological inferiority with numbers and inventiveness.
The naval tactics used against the Nationalists alluded to earlier were idiosyncratic and
opportunistic but also surprisingly effective. During Korea, the Taiwan Strait crises of the
1950s, and the American war in Indochina, the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) countered inferiority
with larger swarms of fighters and attention to perfection of training and tactics. As Xiaoming
Zhang puts it, referring to the (pre-1979) Vietnam period: “It was clearly recognized that the
Americans had better aircraft and the tactical advantage, and that they held the initiative in
their incursions. The PLAAF leadership nevertheless felt that a perfect mastery of operational
techniques would help to overcome disadvantages.” Over the long term, the navy and air force
succeeded to the extent that the Nationalists were largely neutralized in the seas and airspace
along the Chinese coast and the United States was at least deterred from venturing too much
in or near Chinese waters and airspace.
Doctrinal flexibility is another prominent theme across the case studies in this volume.
Especially when it came to doctrine, the PLA quickly evolved into an eclectic “learning
organization” that adopted foreign theory, accepted what was useful, rejected what was not,
and adapted to what they would refer to as “the subjective realities” of the situation. For
example, the PLA Navy eventually discarded the Soviet “Young School” of naval doctrine and
the Air Force likewise threw off Soviet World War II–vintage air combat doctrine. Zhang
relates how, in November and December of 1951, PLAAF commander General Liu Yalou
went to the front to study the air war firsthand and while there devised a fresh and original set
of air combat tactics.
In a broader sense, according to Yu Bin, the campaigns of the Korean War were of
“tremendous importance in terms of the PLA’s understanding of modern military operations.”
Many lessons from Korea were negative, and during the period of stalemate the PLA was in
many ways forced to become the “mirror image” of its enemy—especially in terms of its
approach to military organization, the role of firepower, and the management of logistics.
Indeed, the first serious professional military reforms that the PLA underwent in the mid to
late 1950s were a direct result of its bitter experiences in Korea.

But Korea became the “forgotten war” for the PLA. Mao’s subsequent ideological
campaigns and the purge of Peng Dehuai encouraged the Chinese armed forces to be more
“red” than “expert.” As a result, the many painful lessons the PLA had learned earlier were not
revisited and sufficiently appreciated until the domestic political situation had changed and the
PLA was forced to expose how far it had fallen behind. Both Kenny and Godwin offer that the
war against Vietnam in 1979 was the wake-up call that exposed many of the PLA’s
shortcomings and led to the military reforms that continue to this day.
The Dominant Role of Mao Zedong

Throughout the case studies in this volume the shadow of Mao Zedong looms larger than life
—both Mao as commander-in-chief and Mao as military theorist. Godwin’s chapter stresses
the centrality and near-sacrosanct status of Mao’s theories. He underscores, quite correctly in
our view, that PLA doctrine is to this day rooted in Mao’s military writings, many of which
were penned in the 1930s.
Strategically, operationally, and at times even tactically, Mao’s decisions were the motive
force behind the PLA at war. Needless to say, for better or for worse, the history and
development of the PLA bears his indelible imprint. Among the contributors in this volume
there is no disagreement on these points. Nevertheless, and not surprisingly, within these
chapters, “The Great Helmsman” receives mixed reviews.
Mao’s heavy hand in the prosecution of the war in Korea has always been assumed in the
West but rarely documented. In his excellent contribution to this volume, Shu Guang Zhang
gives us many concrete examples of Mao’s detailed orders and his exchanges with field
commanders. We are apprised of the abrupt shifts in planning imposed on the long-suffering
Peng Dehuai, the commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers, and Zhang recounts the
story of Peng’s dramatic trip to Beijing in February 1951 to confront Mao over the direction of
the war. Mao’s involvement may be alternately viewed as natural, necessary, and ultimately
effective (closer to Yu Bin’s view), or as interfering, distracting, and near disastrous (closer to
Zhang’s). Regardless of where one comes down in the debate, there can be no doubt that
Korea was fully Mao Zedong’s war.
During the Taiwan Strait crises Mao’s hand was also clearly in evidence. Once again, as in
Korea, Mao involved himself down to the smallest operational details. We learn from
Xiaobing Li that PLA field commanders “followed Mao’s orders without any question or
hesitation”—even when they were uneasy with or puzzled by their directives. During the
Taiwan Strait episodes Mao is mercurial—he is deeply worried, suffers from insomnia, and
vacillates. At times he conducts important meetings in his bathrobe at the seaside resort at
Beidaihe, and he often crows over his strategic acumen. Eccentricities aside, Li’s chapter also
paints a portrait of Mao as cautious and calculating, a picture at odds with the 1950s image in
the West of a reckless leader during these crises.
As in Korea, the relationship between Mao and Peng Dehuai during the Taiwan Strait crises
was close but complicated. In early 1955 Mao deferred to Peng on the final decision to invade
Yijiangshang Island. By 1958, however, Mao was drafting the orders issued in Peng’s name and
appeared to be making all decisions, apparently with little or no counsel. Peng, of course,
would be purged the next year after his criticism of the Great Leap Forward at the Lushan
Conference in 1959.
By 1958, as Xiaobing Li shows, Mao was exhibiting the attributes of infallibility, often
rationalizing constrained options as successes. For example, Mao offered extended self-
congratulations for his “noose policy” emanating from this latest Taiwan Strait crisis. But the
“noose policy” has every appearance in retrospect of an elaborate and self-serving ex post
facto rationalization—a fig leaf designed to obscure the fact that any serious PLA attempt to
retake the offshore islands of Jinmen and Mazu may well have triggered a sizable U.S.
retaliation, including nuclear strikes.
Thomas Robinson identifies a strikingly similar ex post facto rationalization on the part of
Mao in the wake of the March 1969 border clashes with the Soviet Union. In this case,
according to Robinson, Mao’s decisions backfired and the PLA was being bloodied along the
border. Only Zhou Enlai’s “diplomatic capitulation” in September 1969 ended the debacle.
Nevertheless, Mao still claimed strategic success by tying the events to rapprochement with
the United States.
Robinson is scathing in his judgment of Mao and extrapolates from the events of 1969 to
reach a more general criticism. Mao’s machinations, high-risk endeavors, and international
gamesmanship cannot be disentangled from PLA operational planning, even down to the
smallest engagements. Mao, it seems, was content to pocket temporary, tactical gains, such as
the March 2 ambush of Soviet troops on Damansky Island, while ignoring the long-term
strategic consequences. The negative lessons of 1969, says Robinson, were “similar to those
that should have been learned in the Korean War, possibly in the two 1950s Taiwan Strait
crises, and even in the Civil War of the 1940s. Indeed, with some adjustment, they might also
have been applied to the Sino-Indian border conflicts of 1959 and 1962 and to the Chinese
thrust into Vietnam in 1979.”
There is also a strong argument that Mao hurt the PLA directly through his domestic
policies. The political, social, and economic damage caused by his endless “mass
movements”—especially the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution—disrupted PLA modernization. Moreover, the near-disastrous Chinese economic
performance under Mao’s stewardship was a major factor frustrating PLA attempts to match
American and Soviet weaponry. Godwin’s chapter touches on these issues, in particular on the
disruptions to military modernization stemming from the Cultural Revolution. The close
relationship between Mao’s domestic policies and the stunted development of the PLA Navy
is a prominent motif in Alexander Huang’s chapter. For his part, Kenny argues that the
debilitating impact of the Cultural Revolution on the PLA was in evidence during the war
against Vietnam in 1979, three years after Mao’s death.
In spite of these vicarious and retrospective criticisms of Mao as commander-in-chief, his
“military thought” remains enshrined in the corporate culture and traditions of today’s PLA.
Scale and Typology of Fighting

An overview of the PLA in action from the Civil War forward suggests ways of grouping its
wars and combat episodes. Its experiences and performance can be categorized in terms of: (1)
operational scale and duration; (2) victories, defeats, and stalemates; (3) chronological trends;
and (4) strategic import. How large or small were its conflicts? How does the overall scorecard
stack up? Did the nature of the fighting or the PLA approach to battle significantly evolve
over the half century? How crucial to the PLA and to the Chinese state were the conflicts?
The juxtaposition of and interrelationships among these categories also suggest a few
derivative patterns of interest.
Operational Scale and Duration
The largest, longest, and most costly conflicts by far were the Civil War and the Korean War.
Both involved many hundreds of thousands of PLA troops. During the Liao-Shen Campaign
alone (late 1948 in northeast China) Lin Biao commanded some 700,000 PLA troops in fifty-
three divisions. Some 550,000 PLA troops were involved in the crucial battle of Yuzhou during
the Huai-Hai Campaign in central China. In Korea, Chinese troop strength was on the order of
300,000 for the early campaigns, and had reached some 700,000 by the time of the mid-1951
stalemate. The scale of all incidents of fighting after Korea, including the 1950s Taiwan Strait
crises, the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the 1969 Sino-Soviet border fighting, and the combined naval
and air combat over all these years, was much lower by comparison. The approximately
100,000 troops sent into Vietnam for a month in 1979 was larger in scale than anything since
Korea, but small compared to Korea.
Victories, Defeats, and Stalemates

Measuring victories, defeats, and draws turns out to be an ambiguous exercise dependent on
perspective. The Civil War was a clear-cut Communist and PLA victory. But it was not
entirely settled because the Kuomintang regime survived on Taiwan, and the island remains
out of reach today. In strictly military terms Korea was a stalemate. However, the Chinese
consistently consider the war as a great PLA victory. The 1950s Strait Crises and the sporadic
naval and air combat related to them were PLA successes in the sense that the Nationalist
military threat emanating from Taiwan was gradually reduced and nearly eliminated. At the
same time the PLA was forced to back down at crucial points in 1955 and 1958 under U.S.
military pressure and the ultimate objective of reunification was thwarted once again. The
Sino-Indian War of 1962 was a clear-cut victory and as such it was an anomaly. It was, in our
opinion, the PLA’s one “perfect war” since 1949 despite its relatively small scale. Much about
1969 remains murky, but the PLA appears to have been soundly thrashed in its border clashes
with the Soviets over an extended period of months. Vietnam in 1979 is another ambiguous
case. The PLA attained its stated operational objectives—the capture of five provincial capitals
adjacent to the border—but the military performance was rusty at best and disproportionately
costly in terms of casualties.
Chronological Trends
The chronological overview is more obvious, especially in relation to operational scale. The
heaviest fighting is concentrated between 1948 and 1953. Thereafter it tapers off in scale and
frequency, with less fighting in the 1960s than in the 1950s. Vietnam in 1979 was the sole major
combat operation in the 1970s, and remains the last significant PLA operational experience.
Strategic Import
In the last category the string of conflicts can be roughly divided into two groups. The first are
those that were of core strategic importance (i.e., regime-threatening “life and death”
situations). The second category includes those episodes that were of second-order importance
—the wars of chastisement of second-tier powers. The Civil War and Korea can clearly be
placed in the first category. Depending upon one’s point of view, the crises in the Taiwan
Straits might also edge into the first category as might the 1969 Soviet border clashes. These
latter two are arguable. However, India in 1962 and Vietnam in 1979, and the endemic naval
and air combat with the Nationalists, are easily placed in the second category.
The Civil War, unclear in outcome until late 1948 and 1949, marked the ascendancy of the
Chinese Communist Party after near extinction in the 1930s and the establishment of the
People’s Republic (PRC). While the wisdom of going to war in Korea is open to debate, once
committed the PRC and PLA risked expansion of the war into Chinese territory and the
possibility of nuclear attack by the United States. Moreover, military defeat in Korea might
well have led to the demise of the new regime. The 1950s Strait Crises and the 1969 Soviet
border clashes, while much smaller in scale, both involved risky confrontations with stronger
nuclear powers; either could easily have escalated and triggered nuclear strikes against China.
In a kind of reverse brinksmanship, Mao and the PLA signaled the United States and the
Soviet Union that China would not be intimidated regardless of the lopsided disadvantage in
armaments and even more lopsided nuclear disparity.
PLA operations against India, Vietnam, and Taiwan did not present such dire threats to core
Chinese interests, especially when combat could be separated from potential clashes with the
United States. More at work in these cases was a classic Chinese need to assert sovereignty by
“teaching lessons and sending signals.”
PLA Warfighting and Deterrence

Another larger pattern in post-1949 PLA history is worth noting. That is, since 1949 the PLA
has engaged in hostilities with each of the large powers along China’s periphery at least once.
Over fifty years the PLA has fought the United States, India, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam.
The one exception since 1949 is Japan, which defaulted as a military threat due to its World
War II defeat. But of course the PLA had also fought the Japanese from the late 1930s until
1945.
In effect, regardless of the relative state of PLA modernization and capability vis-à-vis
potential enemies, one could argue that decision makers in Beijing have themselves not been
deterred from going to war when they have decided their interests were at risk.
It is also arguable, although tentative at this point, that the cumulative effect of this
apparent willingness on the part of Beijing to employ the PLA against more powerful
militaries has resulted in the creation of a psychological deterrent of sorts in which potential
enemies, no matter how powerful, “self deter” actions on their part which they believe might
cause Beijing to engage in hostilities. For example, U.S. strategic planners were quite sensitive
to the potential impact on China in their own operational planning against North Vietnam
proper. There was great concern that the war not be expanded in such a way that China
would be drawn in as was the case in Korea. The deterrent value of the PLA was not
preordained in 1949, when China, despite its enormous size, was widely perceived as a weak
and chaotic nation. It was earned through the accretion of the successive instances of
willingness to employ the PLA in combat, regardless of the justification, wisdom, or
performance related to any one of them.
Along these lines, characterizations of fifty years of PLA warfighting can be further
grouped around opposing poles of interpretation. The first pole, or school of thought, might be
dubbed “the PLA and Mao mess things up.” The second school of thought might be labeled
“necessary tactical sacrifices, larger deterrent achieved.”
The first school of thought would stress poor military performance, miscalculations,
unwarranted risk taking, and missed opportunities. It would argue that Mao and the CCP
mucked things up by ruining the nation’s economic base and damaging the texture of Chinese
society with a wrong-headed political philosophy and incessant political campaigns. This led to
a semi-permanent weakening of the PLA—technically, professionally, and institutionally. The
argument would be advanced that the PLA still suffers from the effects of such wrongheaded
policies, which only now are being slowly redressed and reversed. This overview highlights
the terrible carnage of Korea, the inordinate risk-taking of the 1950s and 1969, the legacy
disaster of 1979, as well as the “red versus expert” debacle.
The second school of thought argues that a new and untried People’s Republic of China,
after a century of Chinese humiliation and weakness, stood up after the chaos of Japanese
invasion and civil war and almost immediately engaged with and fought the United States to a
stalemate. Mao’s impudent recklessness, it would be argued, in fact served the larger strategic
and psychological necessity of defying powerful nuclear-armed opponents and over the long
term this worked. In other words, this school would argue that, although the PLA was forced
to confront superior enemies and suffer horrendous casualties and tactical-level defeats, the
PLA suffered no major strategic defeats. In the long run, since 1949, the PLA has successfully
deterred surrounding powers from invading China proper, fighting in China proper, or
engaging in hostilities too near the Chinese periphery.
The chapters herein provide arguments for either view, and we leave it to the readers to
reach their own conclusions.
Some Concluding Thoughts on the Study of the Operational History of the

PLA
History for history’s sake requires no justification. There remains a dearth of literature when it
comes to the operational history of the PLA since 1949 that is only slowly being filled. This
spirit of academic inquiry prompted the editors, who have lifelong interests in military history
in general and the history of Asia in particular, to initiate this project. As mentioned in the
beginning of this chapter, there are few places where nonspecialists can turn to read about the
scope of Chinese operations since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It is our
hope that those who are generally interested in this subject will find these chapters useful.
We also hope that professional military institutions in the United States, China, and
elsewhere will find some use for this study. Most institutions of professional military education
in the United States, the service war colleges and military academies, have included some
course materials on Chinese military history for many, many years. At a minimum, and rightly
so, this usually consists of including Sun Zi’s Art of War as part of general survey courses on
the development of strategic thought, oftentimes read in conjunction with Clausewitz, Jomini,
Mahan, and others. Moreover, because of the challenges of irregular warfare and
counterinsurgency that confronted the U.S. military during the Cold War—especially in
Vietnam, but also in Latin America and other parts of the world—American military officers
have been exposed to the military writings of Mao Zedong for decades. But as this volume
clearly shows, there is much more to “Mao Zedong Military Thought” than guerrilla warfare
and irregular warfare. Under Mao’s leadership the PLA engaged in many conventional wars
and operations, as well as what today is referred to as “Military Operations Other than War”
(shows of force, demonstrations of force, and “flexible deterrent options”). The PLA today,
while proud of its irregular “Red Army” past, is most definitely a conventional force with an
equally interesting set of past experiences in conventional warfare. We hope these chapters
will help bring these experiences to light in future courses of instruction.
At the same time, an awareness of the operational history and experiences of the PLA since
1949 ought to be of more than passing interest to scholars and researchers who specialize in
contemporary Chinese military studies.
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, a historical overview of the operational
legacies of the PLA can help scholars of current Chinese military modernization develop a
larger and more realistic context in which to place the myriad of current PLA reforms—
especially those reforms stimulated by the Persian Gulf War in 1991. What is the degree of
continuity? To what degree does the current set of reforms differ from past reforms, such as
those that Peng Dehuai attempted to institute after Korea? To what extent are the PLA’s
historical experiences germane to its intended future direction?
Next, an overview of past warfighting may provide some insights into a generic PLA
“operational culture.” What have been the constants in the Chinese operational art over the
decades? What seems to be changing in the current theoretical military discourses that fill the
professional military journals in China? Even if we can discern a unique operational culture for
the PLA from past experiences, is it still relevant? After all, the PLA has not fought a serious
campaign since 1979—and the world of military operations has turned over many times since
then.
Moreover, some of the very top leaders of the PLA entering the new millennium have
careers in uniform that span the entire breadth of the case studies in this volume.11 For
example, current (2002) Defense Minister and Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice
Chairman General Chi Haotian joined the PLA in July 1945 and served as a political
commissar with the Chinese People’s Volunteers in Korea. CMC Vice Chairman General
Zhang Wannian joined the PLA in 1944, fought in the Civil War, and much later served as a
deputy group army commander during the 1979 war against Vietnam. Current Chief of the
General Staff General Fu Quanyou joined the PLA in 1946 and also fought in Korea and
Vietnam.12 To what degree have the legacies of the past affected their leadership of the PLA
and their vision for the future PLA? Were these formative experiences analogous to the
intense impact of the war in Vietnam for today’s senior military leaders in the United States?
And in what ways have the senior PLA leaders acted upon their lessons learned? If Richard
Neustadt and Ernest May are correct that “decision-makers always draw on past experience,
whether conscious of doing so or not,” then we might ask how the policies and actions of this
current generation of top PLA leadership have been influenced by the particular nature of
their “remembered past.”13 Then, in turn, what were the formative operational experiences of
the next generation of top PLA leaders? We cannot reach exact answers to these questions,
but we can approximate through close study of the experiences that shaped their early careers
and subsequent command positions.
Serious endeavors to understand where the PLA is going must also appreciate where the
PLA has been. The operational history of the PLA is clearly a significant part of the corporate,
institutional, and professional culture of the Chinese armed forces today. This is obvious as
reflected in materials from professional PLA journals, numerous historical entries in recently
published PLA encyclopedias, and various textbooks used in PLA institutions of professional
military education. The PLA proudly claims that since its founding in 1927 it has “successfully
conducted some four-hundred campaign operations of various scales.” Moreover, the
experiences garnered in the course of those campaigns are important elements, though clearly
not the only elements, that help shape current PLA thinking about the nature of war in
general and the requirements of future warfare. As one PLA textbook puts it, “the study of
military campaigns must draw on the lessons of history” in addition to present realities and
anticipated future developments.14 The outstanding question remains: What lessons does the
PLA think it has learned from a study of its own operational history? We look forward to the
day when more official Chinese military histories, and especially operational analyses, are
available. Until such time we must rely on the work of outside scholars and observers, such as
that offered in the subsequent chapters.
Notes
1. For an overview of changes in and growth of the field of Chinese military studies, see David Shambaugh, “PLA
Studies Today: A Maturing Field,” in James C. Mulvenon and Richard H. Yang, eds., The People’s Liberation Army in the
Information Age (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 1999), pp. 7–21.
2. In addition to an increase in individual articles in scholarly journals, the 1990s witnessed the rise of regularly
scheduled annual conferences by experts on the PLA, the proceedings of which have usually been published. For example, see
C. Dennison Lane, Mark Weisenbloom, Dimon Liu, eds., Chinese Military Modernization (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1996);
Larry M. Wortzel, ed., The Chinese Armed Forces in the 21st Century (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 1999); James R.
Lilley and David Shambaugh, eds., China’s Military Faces the Future (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999); Susan Puska, ed., The
People’s Liberation Army After Next (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2000); James C. Mulvenon and Andrew N.D.
Yang, eds., Seeking Truth from Facts: A Retrospective on Chinese Military Studies in the Post-Mao Era (Santa Monica, CA:
The RAND Corporation, 2001); and Andrew Scobell, ed., The Costs of a Conflict: The Impact on China of a Future War
(Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2001).
3. For example, Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Shu Guang Zhang, Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950–
1953 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995); and more recently, Zhai Qiang, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), and Li Xiaobing, Allan R. Millett, and Yu Bin, trans. and eds., Mao’s
Generals Remember Korea (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001).
4. For a brief but informative overview of the research and publication of military history in the PLA see Wu Chunqiu,
“The Academy of Military Science and Official Military History: A Brief Introduction,” in Robin Higham, ed., Official
Military Historical Offices and Sources, vol. 2, The Western Hemisphere and the Pacific Rim (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
2000), pp. 65–69. For PLA interest in better archival work see Xinhua (New China News Agency), “Fu Quanyou Urges
Rapidly Computerizing Military Archives as Instructed by Jiang,” April 5, 2001 (Washington, DC: Foreign Broadcast
Information Service).
5. In his chapter on the PLA Navy, Alexander Huang questions whether even the Yijiangshan campaign can rightly be
classified as a “joint operation,” but Xiaoming Zhang, in his chapter on the PLA Air Force, agrees with Xiaobing Li by calling
Yijiangshan “the only true combined arms operation in PLA history.”
6. It is tempting here to engage in a bit of “what if history.” What if Mao had kept his hands off and let Peng call the
shots on the ground? Arguably it might have been a much tougher war for the U.S./UN side.
7. Yu Bin cites official PLA casualty figures for the CPV for the entire war as 360,000, but says that the PLA figures “are
inaccurate at best.” Mao’s Generals Remember Korea, p. 249, n. 40; see Yu Bin’s remarks in this note regarding difficulties on
both sides when it comes to casualty figures for the Korean War. In informal discussions with senior retired Chinese officers,
the editors have been told Chinese casualties during the Korean War were close to 400,000.
8. Xiaobing Li’s formulation. Xiaoming Zhang also discusses the careful PLA Air Force rules for avoiding confrontations
with U.S. planes.
9. Mao’s military principles are summarized efficiently in Paul Godwin’s chapter.
10. Yu Bin includes excerpts from the telegram in his chapter.
11. We recognize that many of the elder veterans will likely retire after the 16th Party Congress in 2002 and the
subsequent National People’s Congress in 2003. Yet the point remains—for the past decade the PLA has been led by men who
have been in uniform since World War II.
12. See “Zhang Wannian, Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission,” Xinhua, March 17, 1998; “Chi Haotian,
State Councillor,” Xinhua, March 18, 1998; “Fu Quanyou, Member of the Central Military Commission,” Xinhua, March 17,
1998; and David Shambaugh, “China’s Post-Deng Military Leadership,” in Lilley and Shambaugh, China’s Military Faces the
Future, pp. 11–35.
13. Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: The
Free Press, 1986).
14. Wang Houqing et al., eds., Zhanyi xue (The science of campaigns) (Beijing: National Defense University Press, 2000),
pp. 7, 21.

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1

Mark A. Ryan, David M. Finkelstein, and Michael A. McDevitt

Toward an Operational History of the PLA Since 1949

Intricate Planning and Preparation

Command and Control: Tension Between Centralization and Field

Intimate Connection Between Fighting and Politics

Combat Tactics and Performance

Technological Catch-up, Adaptability, and Doctrinal Flexibility

late 1950s were a direct result of its bitter experiences in Korea.

The Dominant Role of Mao Zedong

Scale and Typology of Fighting

Victories, Defeats, and Stalemates

PLA Warfighting and Deterrence

Some Concluding Thoughts on the Study of the Operational History of the

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