Military Reform with Chinese Characteristics

Adapting to the development trend of new military changes in the world, starting from China's national and military conditions, China will take the leap-forward development path of mobilizing mechanization with informatization and promoting informatization with mechanization. Through deepening reforms, China will realize the overall transformation of army building and build a powerful modern, regularized and revolutionary army capable of winning future informationized wars. It is a strategic guiding theory for the modernization of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The military revolution with Chinese characteristics is the product of China's Reform and Opening-up process and the world's new military revolution process. On the one hand, Reform and Opening-up started the road of fewer but better troops with Chinese characteristics, providing the basic historical conditions for the process of military revolution with Chinese characteristics. The army achieved a strategic transformation of the guiding ideology and entered a new stage of development. On the other hand, the “Gulf War” in the early 1990s had a significant and profound impact on the adjustment of the international strategic pattern and the development of the world’s military, and the world's new military revolution is beginning to emerge.

The CPC Central Committee and the Central Military Commission were keenly aware that high technology would have a decisive impact on future wars, and proposed to thoroughly discuss the new characteristics and laws of modern warfare and study the countermeasures. The strategic thinking of military revolution with Chinese characteristics began to form. The military revolution with Chinese characteristics is a comprehensive and systematic innovation that takes informatization as the essential feature and core content in the military field, starting from China's national and military conditions, with a view to meet the challenges of the new military revolution in the contemporary world. The military revolution with Chinese characteristics has very rich contents, which continues to be enriched and developed with the development of the times, and its main contents are as follows:

(1) Core essence— “informatization”. This reveals the essence of military modernization. Modernization is a dynamic concept. When the modernization process is at a historical stage of transition from an industrialized society to an informationized society, the essence and core of the world’s new military revolution is informatization, which is an important strategic prediction to catch up with the world’s new military revolution.

(2) Functional positioning—win the informationized wars. Being prepared to fight a modern war" proposed by Deng Xiaoping is based on the judgment of the essence of future wars. Jiang Zemin proposed to “win possible local wars under modern technologies, especially under high-tech conditions” and “win the informationized wars”; Xi Jinping proposed to “win local wars under informationized conditions”, representing the strategic objectives of the military revolution with Chinese characteristics formulated in response to domestic and international environmental changes.

(3) Basic approach—compound development of mechanization and informatization. The informatization of the Chinese military cannot follow the old path of first mechanization and then informatization in developed countries, nor can it go directly beyond the mechanization stage to achieve informatization. Instead, it should accelerate military informatization construction while strengthening mechanization construction according to national and military conditions. Xi Jinping emphasized that we must adhere to the informatization-oriented and mechanization-based principles, and promote the compound development and organic integration of the two.

(4) Strategic steps— “Three-step” strategy. According to the “three-step” strategy for national defense and military modernization proposed by the Central Military Commission at the end of 1997, the first step is to take more than ten years to strive to achieve the requirements of the military strategic guidelines in the new period and lay a good foundation; strive to basically achieve mechanization by 2020, and make significant progress in informatization construction; and by the middle of the 21st century, basically realize the modernization of national defense and the army. The military revolution with Chinese characteristics is a theoretical crystallization of the use of basic Marxist principles to promote the modernization of the People's Liberation Army, and a major political policy for the People's Liberation Army to adjust the modernization of the military based on scientific judgment on the international strategic situation and the development trend of modern wars, reflecting forward-looking thinking and spirit of advancing with the times. With the advancement of the times, the guiding theory of modernization of the People's Liberation Army is still moving forward. While paying close attention to the development of the world's military, the Chinese army continues to pioneer and innovate and embarks on the road of military revolution that defeats the enemy.