Abstract
Even in the long run, it is difficult for China to become a genuine global military power. More likely, the deployment of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will not go beyond China’s territory and its outreach will generally fall within the Asia-Pacific region. In other words, China will remain a regional military power for the foreseeable future. However, with the PLAs modernization getting more support from China’s rapid economic growth, how the PLA will play its role still matters a great deal. This study attempts to explore the historical evolution of China’s national security strategy and how it has changed the PLA’s role accordingly. Then it traces the possible future direction of the PLA by examining its past practices and the challenges it has faced.
1. Colonel Qi Da-peng is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies, National Defense University (NDU) of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The author wrote this paper when he was a visiting senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the author and do not represent positions of the PLA, NDU, or RSIS. He thanks Shiping Tang and Richard Bitzinger for their helpful comments.
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Notes
The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, “China’s Peaceful Development Road,” Beijing Review, Vol. 49, No. 3 (January 19, 2006), pp. 4–5.
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© 2009 Shiping Tang, Mingjiang Li, and Amitav Acharya
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Qi, Dp. (2009). The PLA’s Role in China’s Regional Security Strategy. In: Tang, S., Li, M., Acharya, A. (eds) Living with China. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622623_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622623_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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