Jiang Zemin’s Thoughts on National Defense and Army Building

It refers to Jiang Zemin's scientific theoretical system on basic issues such as military strategy, army building, and national defense building in the new period. It is the theory on our army building in the new period developed based on the new requirements and tasks of the development of the times, which scientifically clarifies the status and role of the national defense and army building under the new historical conditions, objectives and tasks, guidelines, overall ideas, fundamental approaches and strategic steps, development momentum and political guarantees, etc., forming a systematic military theoretical system and advancing our Party ’s military guiding theory to a new stage. Jiang Zemin’s thoughts on national defense and army building focus on the changes in the development of the times, with a series of new ideas proposed aiming at answering the following questions: How to effectively maintain national security and development interests under the circumstances that the world situation is changing and military security factors are on the rise; how to realize the mutual promotion and coordinated development of national defense construction and economic construction under the circumstances of increasing national economic strength and higher requirements for safety and security; how to maintain the Party’s absolute leadership over the army, and ensure that the nature, character and style of the people’s army remain unchanged under the circumstances of deepening Reform and Opening-up and experiencing major social changes; how to embark on a road of leap-forward development of our army's modernization construction under the circumstances that the world’s military development is advancing by leaps and bounds and informationization has become the core and essence of military modernization; how to constantly improve and develop a military strategy of active defense under the circumstances that a major change has occurred in the form of warfare and military struggle tasks encounter new challenges and tests; and how to improve the level of governing the army under the context of implementing the law-based governance and building a socialist country ruled by law, etc.

The main contents of Jiang Zemin's thoughts on national defense and army building include: planning national defense and army building from the perspective of the overall international strategy and the overall situation of national development; solving two historical issues of “winning battles and never degenerating”; the Party's absolute leadership over the army is the everlasting military soul of our army; actively promoting military changes with Chinese characteristics; proposing military strategic guidelines for the new period and using it to control the overall situation of army building; comprehensively strengthening army building according to general requirements of “five sentences”, i.e., political qualification, military excellence, good style, strict discipline, and strong support; always putting ideological and political construction in the first place of army building; implementing the strategy of strengthening the army by means of science and technology, strengthening the quality of the army; training and bringing up a large number of high-quality new military personnel; accelerating the modernization of weapons and equipment; embarking on a road of military modernization with low investment and high efficiency; adhering to govern the army in accordance with the law and with strict discipline; reform is the driving force of army modernization; relying on the people to promote the army and national defense building, etc.

Jiang Zemin's thoughts on national defense and army building are inherited and developed from Mao Zedong's military thoughts and Deng Xiaoping's thoughts army building in the new period. It further answers the basis questions of what kind of army to build, how to build the army, what battle to fight in the future, and how to fight a battle under the new historical conditions, and represents a powerful ideological weapon and scientific guide for advancing national defense and army building under the new situation.