Two Transitions of Army Development Pattern

Gradually realize the shifts from focusing on quantity-scale to focusing on quality-efficiency, and from labor-intensive to technology-intensive. In December 1995, Jiang Zemin proposed at the enlarged meeting of the Central Military Commission: The basic spirit is to rely on scientific and technological progress, strengthen quality construction, and develop the People's Liberation Army into a modern and regular revolutionary army with advanced ideology, moderate scale, scientific institutional establishment, sophisticated weapons and equipment, high personnel quality, efficient and flexible command, strong logistics support, and the ability to win local wars under modern technologies, especially high-tech conditions. At the same time, the Central Military Commission also proposed the strategy of “strengthening the military by means of science and technology”. “Strengthening the military by means of science and technology” is a powerful lever to promote the modernization of the army. The essence of the “two shifts” is to shift the focus of improving combat effectiveness to relying on scientific and technological progress, which means a series of modernized improvements of army building. For this end, it is required to strengthen the development of high-tech weapons and equipment, improve existing weapons and equipment, and form a system of supporting weapons and equipment; innovate and improve training systems, methods, and means, and promote the development of military training to a higher level; develop a scientific institutional establishment, and improve scientific and technological innovation capability and scientific management level; implement talent strategic projects, train high-quality new-type military talents, and improve the scientific and technological quality of officers and soldiers; rely on national scientific and technological development, improve the overall effectiveness of military expenditures, and take the road of military modernization with less investment and higher benefits.

The realization of the “two shifts” in the development of army building requires to completely change the concept and mode of focusing on quantity-scale, take the road of army building focusing on quality-efficiency, and fundamentally solve the problem of insufficient ability to fight modern warfare and command modern warfare.