With the 100th founding anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) just a month back in July, and considering China’s quite regular interference and provocations in South China Sea region, the questions on the true character of Party’s military, especially the CCP Navy, also referred to by its more burnished name PLA Navy, have become quite poignant.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is one of the few armed forces of the world that owes its allegiance not to its country or government, but to the ruling party. Prima facie this should cause contradiction in the mind of a soldier tasked with protecting the sovereignty of the nation. This is probably the case, but it is only the tip of the complications.
Since its inception, close association with the Communist Party has given PLA the ability to influence internal power-plays. This political character has, however, disadvantaged its development. It has made the PLA rigid, hierarchical, cumbersome, non-meritocratic and indisposed to change. The effect this has on its combat ability goes beyond mere perceptions of where its loyalty should lie.
1927: the birth of PLA and the story thereon
To understand this better, it is necessary to first take a brief look at the evolution of the PLA, since its creation in 1927. Created as a mob to bring the Communists to power, rather than for principles, heritage and people of a nation, the structure of the CCP Military has been maintained towards that first and primary task, of keeping the CCP in power, whatever may be the cost. The CCP Military, therefore, represents the will of the CCP and not the Chinese people, as was seen during the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.
Because of these very reasons, Chinese leaders after leaders have pandered to the political influence of the PLA; according it significant autonomy in return. Every Chairman from Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin, have used the privilege accorded by their position in the Central Military Commission (CMC) to place his cronies in top ranks of the PLA and make it their power base.
The result of this complicated history was that when Chairman for life Xi took over in 2012, he found a PLA that was politically influential yet autonomous. Worse, over the years, generals had exploited the absence of civilian oversight to allow corruption to permeate to unimaginable levels. Its pervasiveness could be estimated from the existence of fixed rates for promotions to various ranks. While the rate for promotion to Major General was a few million dollars, to be enlisted as a conscript required a bribe of $16,000. The decentralized nature of the PLA’s promotion and recruitment system meant that graft was widespread. To make matters worse, the vested interests had also disallowed structural change. The PLA remained land forces biased, with the other services getting not much more than lip service. The system of commissars and committees too remained almost unchanged from Maoist days.
To address these issues, Chairman Xi introduced a ground-breaking reform in 2015. He put in place extensive measures to check corruption, reduce the dominance of the men in olive green and adapt the structure of the PLA for joint network-centric warfare. Unfortunately though, he too took advantage of PLA’s political clout and exclusive link to the leader. He put in place loyalists and did not take any steps to enhance civilian oversight. In fact, like Deng and Jiang, he has repeatedly drawn attention to the Chairman Responsibility System, to remind rivals in the Party that it is only he who commands the gun. More tellingly, instead of abolishing the clearly outdated system of commissars and committees, he has doubled down on it. This is possibly since he sees the value indoctrination has in increasing allegiance of rank and file directly to him. Last, he has centralized power. Now almost all major decisions have to go through him. This too creates inefficiencies.
The drawbacks of this contradiction are most evident in a high-tech force like the PLA Navy, which is required to be agile, independent and decisive. Instead, its command and control remains regressive, meritocracy doubtful and training inadequate. First, its command and control is unlike that in most other navies of the world. It is shared equally between Captain and Commissar. The flaws in this system of dual command were realized by the Soviets soon after they introduced it in the early 20th century. By 1942, they had abolished it in favour of a structure where the Commissar was a junior advisor to the ship’s Captain. China went the other way. While command is theoretically shared between the two, the Commissar is the first among equals. This undeclared advantage stems from his having the deciding vote on the ship’s party committee. In emergency, the captain can act independently, but then he has to later justify his action to the committee. The fear of facing retrospective wisdom is more likely to make him cautious in action.
Another advantage the Commissar has is that he reports on performance of the Captain to those determining the latter’s promotion prospects. Xi’s recent turn to indoctrination would have only strengthened the Commissar’s status. Thus, it would be fair to conclude that the PLA Navy accords greater weightage to political rather than professional competence. This encourages compliance rather than free-thinking. Also, the complicated procedure of decision-making would restrict the ship’s speed of reaction to a crisis. In today’s fast-paced warfare this may prove to be a critical flaw.
The Present Day PLA
Events of past years under Xi Jinping has generated in PLA an atmosphere of fear, which stifles initiative. Many senior officers targeted by Xi’s anti-corruption campaign were done in by informants. This reduces trust within a unit, giving rise to a tittle-tattle culture. It is encouraged by Xi’s recently created Discipline Inspection Commission, which acts as a sort of regressive secret police. Its mandate is to ensure loyalty to Xi, down to the lowest level. Therefore, commanders would be apprehensive of taking any action that may not be seen to be in accordance with the guidance of the Chairman. Their fear of being reported upon for even minor deviations would be especially high since most would have risen through the ranks at a time of extensive corruption. This would make them easy targets in any investigation. A high-profile example of such delayed legal action is the former Chief of the PLA Navy. Admiral Shen Jinlong led the men in white for more than ten years, retiring in 2017. Then suddenly, in 2020, investigations into his monetary decisions were initiated. Considering the extremely high rate of conviction such inquiries have, it can be expected that he will soon be punished. This will surely send a strong message to others in high positions, making them more mistrustful and cautious.
Another effect of the PLA’s complicated path is that meritocracy is questionable. Mao, Deng and Jiang all put a premium on loyalty rather than professionalism in selecting top military leaders. Hu Jintao bucked this trend. But, by being a disengaged leader, he allowed corruption in promotion to flourish. So, it may be assessed that most (if not all) present-day admirals bought their way to the top. Now, with Xi’s anti-corruption drive, this may no longer be possible. But it would seem that loyalty has returned as the main means of advancement. Xi’s new CMC is populated by those promoted by him or having prior close association. In these times of anonymous complaints, it can be expected that such circles of trust extend further down the PLA hierarchy. This would likely come at the cost of meritocratic selection, and is bound to affect the morale and spirit of Army.
Finally, years of focus on land forces have handicapped training in the CCP Navy. For most of the 20th century, its role was to protect the coast and the near seas. Only in the 21st century was this expanded to operations in the far seas. Even then, structure was slow in matching doctrine. Possibly for this reason, it was only in the 2000s that the PLA Navy expanded from single-dimensional to multi-dimensional operations. That was also the time exercises away from the coast and with foreign navies picked up. Likewise, the Air Force started flying bomber sorties over water only in the 2010s. These limitations on deployments imposed by doctrine have been accentuated by unrealistic training. Distracted by the pursuit of money, inadequate oversight and a culture that discourages bad news, training was sub-optimal; at least till recently. For instance, pilots would fly under strict ground control of commanders or instructors talking to them from the control tower. Their dogfights too would have excessive margins of safety. In 2003, the crew of an entire submarine was lost due to procedural lapses and shoddy maintenance. While accidents are not uncommon across navies of the world, what was surprising was that it took shore authorities a week to learn about the loss; that too only after it was reported by fishermen. It is possibly for this reason that even now PLA submarines proceeding beyond the near seas are escorted by a support ship. While Xi has called for rectification of the situation through emphasis on realistic training, it is anticipated that it will take years for the ill-effect of the previous decades to wear off.
These indications of unprofessionalism take the gloss of the PLA Navy’s shiny new kit. What makes the situation all the more irredeemable is that the root cause of the PLA’s problems still persists and it is unlikely that these can be solved by churning out more grey hull, at least not under the leadership of the present Chairman…
