Major celebrations are underway to mark the 80th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army which falls on August 1. The PLA has unveiled an expansive exhibition in Beijing extolling its own contributions to nation-building in China.

A lot of declassified material on China’s military progress, including on its nuclear and space programmes, is being displayed for the first time. Biographies of former top soldiers are being published and foreign military attaches in Beijing are being briefed on the origin and evolution of the PLA. It has indeed been a long march for a rag-tag peasant band that has now evolved into one of the world’s most powerful militaries.

When he launched China on the path of military modernisation nearly two decades ago, Deng Xiaoping put aside Mao Zedong’s focus on the “people’s war doctrine”. Since then the PLA has steadily adapted to the imperatives of the new era. As a rising China retrains and reequips its armed forces, Beijing is reluctant to accept one central principle of modern military organisation.

Unlike in most advanced societies, it is not the state that really controls the nation’s armed forces but the Chinese Communist Party. Occasional suggestions that the armed forces must be “nationalised” are met with a ringing reaffirmation of the CCP’s “absolute leadership” over the PLA. CCP’s new emphasis on “professionalism” in the armed forces does not in any way mean a “depoliticisation” of the armed forces.

Remembering Lin

One of the surprises of the exhibition has been the inclusion of “traitor” Lin Biao in the list of “ten great marshals” who are being eulogised for founding and building the PLA. Mao Zedong had designated Lin as his successor in the 1960s. Lin attempted a coup against the great helmsman during the Cultural Revolution and died in an air crash trying to flee China in September 1971.

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