Anniversary parade reveals new strategic outlook
On 1 October 2009, the People’s Republic of China held the largest parade in its history to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Communist state. Hundreds of thousands of people marched and danced past the review stand in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, with President Hu Jintao and his predecessor Jiang Zemin looking on. The military units taking part, which included 14 infantry, 30 mechanised and 10 airborne formations, offered an insight into China’s evolving strategic posture, and their equipment showed the fruits of 30 years of reform and modernisation within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Overall, the formations on show indicated that the PLA is rapidly reaching its goal, spelt out in a 2008 defence White Paper, of creating smaller, more agile and flexible units that are designed to win regional wars in the digital era with full use of information, communications and surveillance technologies – an objective that parallels those of most Western armed forces. Under this approach, rapid-reaction units, as well as airborne and special forces, are designed to be supported by a highly developed civilian transport network and infrastructure, as well as by a military-civilian integrated logistical system. While some units specialise in amphibious warfare, the main goal is to be able to operate over a wide range of terrains.
Military reforms
The origins of this reform of the PLA can be traced back to the beginning of Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Reform and Opening Up’ movement of the late 1970s. The costly war with Vietnam in 1979 forced the Chinese leadership to acknowledge the need to modernise the PLA. Military reforms gained a new urgency after the 1991 Gulf War, when the destruction of the Iraqi army by a US-led coalition made the PLA realise its own obsolescence. Reforms focused initially on ground forces, as the PLA was expected to fight its next war against a Soviet-style adversary. Air and naval forces received little new investment. The main objective of these reforms was to create smaller, more sophisticated forces. To this end, the PLA was reduced in size from six million active personnel in the 1970s to the current 2.3m through a series of substantial force reductions in the 1980s and 1990s. Under Jiang Zemin, the PLA began to place technological modernisation at the centre of its development for the future, importing many modern weapons systems from abroad.
Reforms under Hu’s leadership have seen the PLA both maintaining existing policies and taking new directions. It has continued to decrease the size of military formations, experimenting with reorganising divisions into brigade-sized units, while building up the quality of the recruits. At the same time, it has shifted the emphasis of development from ground forces to the more technology-intensive air and naval forces. The 60th Anniversary Naval Review that took place in April 2009 indicated that advances were being made in naval forces, and the Beijing parade provided further evidence of progress on all these fronts.
Less infantry, more mechanised
Among ground forces, the most significant change from the last National Day parade in 1999 was the reduction in the number of infantry units. This showed the progress the PLA has made towards the mechanisation of the armed forces. The parade had the highest-ever percentage of mechanised formations, comprising 30 different parade blocks, including the latest generation of Chinese main battle tanks (MBTs) and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs). The Type-99 MBT, which led the vehicles in the parade, is said by China to rival the American M1A2 Abrams, though the validity of this claim is doubtful. Because of its high cost, it currently equips only three elite armoured regiments (two in the Beijing military region and one in Shenyang). It was followed by the Type-96G (essentially an upgraded Type-85 MBT), of which the PLA has about 1,500.
The IFVs on parade included the ZBD-97, which has bridged the gap between infantry and armour that had always existed in the PLA. It combines a Russian turret with a Chinese-developed chassis which has good cross-country and amphibious capabilities. All of the IFVs on display – the ZBD-97, ZBL-09 and ZTS/ZBD-04 series – are amphibious. The family of vehicles that includes the ZTS-04 and the ZBD-04, with advanced fire control, satellite navigation, night vision and advanced communication systems, forms the mainstay of the PLA’s amphibious forces, equipping the two marine brigades, as well as regular PLA ground formations in the Guangzhou and Nanjing military regions. The ZBD-97 and ZBL-09 are designed to be utilised in rapid-reaction roles, deployable at short notice and high speed to regional hotspots.
The infantry units on display indicated shifts within the military. The presence of army cadets, drawn from the Shijiazhuang Army Command College in Hebei Province, underlined the PLA’s emphasis on developing a new, well-educated and professional officer corps. There are already 120,000 university graduates serving in the PLA and, under a new recruitment campaign begun in September, future non-commissioned officers (NCOs) will be directly recruited from among high-school graduates. The PLA hopes that this new generation of officers and NCOs will enable it to man its new generation of high-technology weaponry and will provide the capability to conduct wars in the information age.
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