M. Taylor Fravel on How the People's Liberation Army Does Military Strategy
The Diplomat speaks with M. Taylor Fravel about how China’s People’s Liberation Army thinks about war.
By Ankit Panda
January 30, 2019
How does China’s People’s Liberation Army think about military strategy? How and when has it made changes to its strategy through the past? To better understand these questions and more, The Diplomat’s Ankit Panda spoke to M. Taylor Fravel, the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fravel is the author of a forthcoming book on Chinese military strategy.
The Diplomat: You have a new book on China’s military strategy slated for release later this year. In the course of your research, what factors have you found played the most important role in shaping and changing China’s military strategy?
Fravel: Thanks. To plug the book, the title is Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949 and it will be released on April 23.
In writing this book, I had two goals. One is to provide, for the first time, a complete account of the military strategies that China has adopted since 1949. The book identifies nine military strategies (which the PLA calls the “military strategic guidelineâ€) that have been formulated since the founding of the People’s Republic. These guidelines influence the PLA’s operational doctrine, force structure, and training. So, the book reviews China’s national-level military strategy over seventy years and how these strategies have shaped the PLA. A second goal of the book is to explain when and why China has pursued major changes in its military strategy, or efforts to transform the PLA’s approach to warfighting. These major changes occurred in 1956, 1980, and 1993.
https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/m-taylor-fravel-on-how-the-peoples-liberation-army-does-military-strategy/
