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China Military Modernization in the 1950s and 1960s
Large-scale Soviet aid in modernizing the PLA, which began in
the fall of 1951, took the form of weapons and equipment,
assistance in building China's defense industry, and the loan of
advisers, primarily technical ones. Mostly during the Korean War
years, the Soviet Union supplied infantry weapons, artillery,
armor, trucks, fighter aircraft, bombers, submarines, destroyers,
and gunboats. Soviet advisers assisted primarily in developing a
defense industry set up along Soviet organizational lines. Aircraft
and ordnance factories and shipbuilding facilities were constructed
and by the late 1950s were producing a wide variety of Sovietdesign military equipment. Because the Soviet Union would not
provide China with its most modern equipment, most of the weapons
were outdated and lacked an offensive capability. Both Chinese
dissatisfaction with this defensive aid and the Soviet refusal to
supply China with nuclear bomb blueprints contributed to the
withdrawal of Soviet advisers in 1960
(see Perception of Threat
, this ch.;
Sino-Soviet Relations
, ch. 12).
In the early 1950s, China's leaders decided to reorganize the
military along Soviet lines. In 1954 they established the National
Defense Council, Ministry of National Defense, and thirteen
military regions. The PLA was reconstituted according to Soviet
tables of organization and equipment. It adopted the combined-arms
concept of armor- and artillery-heavy mobile forces, which required
the adoption of some Soviet strategy and tactics. PLA modernization
according to the Soviet model also entailed creation of a
professional officer corps, complete with Soviet-style uniforms,
ranks, and insignia; conscription; a reserve system; and new rules
of discipline. The introduction of modern weaponry necessitated
raising the education level of soldiers and intensifying formal
military training. Political education and the role of political
commissars lost their importance as the modernization effort
progressed.
The military's new emphasis on Soviet-style professionalism
produced tensions between the party and the military. The party
feared that it would lose political control over the military, that
the PLA would become alienated from a society concentrating on
economic construction, and that relations between officers and
soldiers would deteriorate. The party reemphasized Mao's thesis of
the supremacy of men over weapons and subjected the PLA to several
political campaigns. The military, for its part, resented party
attempts to strengthen political education, build a mass militia
system under local party control, and conduct economic production
activities to the detriment of military training. These tensions
culminated in September 1959, when Mao Zedong replaced Minister of
National Defense Peng Dehuai, the chief advocate of military
modernization, with Lin Biao, who deemphasized military
professionalism in favor of revolutionary purity
(see The Great Leap Forward, 1958-60
, ch. 1).
The ascension of Lin Biao and the complete withdrawal of Soviet
assistance and advisers in 1960 marked a new stage in military
development. The Soviet withdrawal disrupted the defense industry
and weapons production, particularly crippling the aircraft
industry. Although the military purchased some foreign technology
in the 1960s, it was forced to stress self-reliance in weapons
production. Lin Biao moved to restore PLA morale and discipline and
to mold the PLA into a politically reliable fighting force. Lin
reorganized the PLA high command, replaced the mass militia with a
smaller militia under PLA control, and reformulated the Maoist
doctrine of the supremacy of men over materiel. Lin stated that
"men and materiel form a unity, with men as the leading factor,"
giving ideological justification to the reemphasis on military
training. Political training, however, continued to occupy 30 to 40
percent of a soldier's time. At the same time, Lin instituted
stricter party control, restored party organization at the company
level, and intensified political education. In 1964 the prestige of
the PLA as an exemplary, revolutionary organization was confirmed
by the "Learn from the PLA" campaign. This campaign, which
purported to disseminate the military's political-work experience
throughout society, resulted in the introduction of military
personnel into party and government organizations, a trend that
increased after the Cultural Revolution began.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the PLA fought one internal
and one external campaign: in Xizang against Tibetan rebels, and on
the Sino-Indian border against India. In the first campaign, PLA
forces overwhelmed poorly equipped Tibetan insurgents who rebelled
in 1958-59 against the imposition of Chinese rule. The Sino-Indian
border war broke out in October 1962 amid the deterioration of
Sino-Indian relations and mutual accusations of intrusions into
disputed territory. In this brief (one month) but decisive
conflict, the PLA attacked Indian positions in the North-East
Frontier Agency (later called Arunachal Pradesh), penetrating to
the Himalayan foothills, and in Ladakh, particularly in the Aksai
Chin region. After routing the Indian Army, the PLA withdrew behind
the original "line of actual control" after China announced a
unilateral cease-fire. Both campaigns were limited conflicts using
conventional tactics.
Data as of July 1987
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