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Demobilization: The Dialectics of PLA Troop Reduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Yitzhak Shichor
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Extract

In recent years, Western and Asian countries have been warning, and warned, against the so-called ”China threat.” These warnings reflect Beijing's military-related policies, primarily the consistent increase in China's defence expenditures since the early 1990s, its resumed acquisition of arms from the former Soviet Union, its continued nuclear tests, and its contribution to the proliferation of conventional, semi-conventional and, allegedly, non-conventional weapons. In their repeated attempts to refute the “China threat” syndrome, Chinese leaders stress, among other things, the 25 per cent cut of about one million troops in the size of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), announced in the mid-1980s. Reportedly slicing it from about 4.2 million to about 3.2 million, this massive demobilization is usually treated, not only byChina watchers but also by the Chinese themselves, as an essential aspect of their ongoing defence reform which goes hand-in-hand with military-tocivilian conversion.

Type
Management of the PLA
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 146 , June 1996 , pp. 336 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1996

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