On Modernization

Mao Zedong pointed out that the most important thing in the modernization of national defense is that "the People's Liberation Army should be built on its original basis into a fine and modern revolutionary army."

In the modernization of the army, Mao Zedong put forward a series of important thoughts. Firstly, the army of a single military service should be developed into a synthetic army. The People's Army was basically a single infantry army for a long time in the past, and infantry was its basic type of soldier. In order to meet the needs of modern warfare, Mao Zedong proposed to strengthen military preparations, saying "the current approach is to reduce the army and increase the navy and air force," and "the air force, in particular, should be strengthened." “We have been fighting for decades, that is, for what is above our heads, there is no way to cope with it, only by not fear of death, by bravery, by the spirit of sacrifice, and today, however, we have the conditions to build and strengthen the naval and air forces, so we should start building them up.” Because the air force has a major role in future warfare to effectively cooperate with land and naval operations, cover the rear organization and mobilization and production and transportation work. As for the navy, in wartime, it can combat the enemy's maritime transport and cooperate with coastal defense operations.

Considering that the army would still be the main force of the battlefield in the future wars, the army itself must be strengthened at the same time, which requires the completion of the transformation of infantry divisions, and the construction of special forces (such as artillery, tanks, chemical defense, communications, etc.) in each army should be greatly strengthened. At the same time, the army must be armed with modern equipment.

A modern army must have modern equipment (including all kinds of aircraft, all kinds of ships, all kinds of artillery, all kinds of tanks, all kinds of vehicles, all kinds of radar, communication equipment and all kinds of munitions) and modern transportation and means of transport (aircraft, railroad trains, road cars, ships). Besides these, modern equipment refers first of all to the more advanced conventional weapons and equipment, which is the main and large amount; also refers to the cutting-edge weapons and equipment, including atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, medium-range and long-range missiles, etc., which are small, but also important.