Reconsidering the PLA as an Interest Group

Isaac B. Kardon and Phillip C. Saunders

MANY OBSERVERS ASSERT THAT THE INFLUENCE OF the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in the Chinese national security policymaking process has increased significantly in recent years. They argue that changes within the PLA, in civil-military relations, and in the broader policy environment in the People's Republic of China (PRC) have increased military influence across a range of policy issues. In assessing this claim, it is important to identify where the PLA's interests and preferences may differ from those of civilian ministries and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership and to understand how PLA views are expressed and pursued in the policy arena. One useful approach is to consider to what extent and on which issues the PLA acts as a coherent interest group.

John Garver's essay "The PLA as an Interest Group in Chinese Foreign Policy" provides a good point of departure. Writing in the mid-1990s, Garver argued that despite significant hurdles to effective political action, there was evidence that the PLA acts as an interest group on some issues and under some circumstances. He drew on policy, observed practice, and Hong Kong reporting on PLA activities to support his claim that "the PLA more or less as an institution, in a fairly unified fashion, intervened in the policy process" to chart a more assertive Chinese policy toward the United States and Taiwan. Twenty years later, the factors Garver identified as affecting PLA capacity to act as an interest group offer a good starting point for assessing PLA policy influence. In the context of rapid political and social change, the PLA has consolidated and expanded many of the institutional traits that allowed it to take concerted political action on behalf of military interests. Meanwhile, a number of internal and external obstacles to PLA influence on policy have diminished or ceased to be relevant.

Although the Chinese national security decisionmaking process remains opaque, the PLA demonstrates characteristics suggestive of interest group behavior: professionalization, growing coherence of its corporate interests, increasingly specified "scientific" features of its mission, a monopoly on functional expertise and information in the national security realm, and enhanced capacity to articulate and defend institutional goals and equities to shape public debate and influence policy. Within the Chinese national security policymaking arena, the PLA commands prestige and privileged access to formal and informal institutional channels through which its interests can be represented, defended, and pursued.

The PLA's relationship to the party (it reports directly to the CCP general secretary, in his capacity as chairman of the Central Military Commission) gives senior military leaders direct access to China's top civilian leader. However, the fact that senior PLA officers are all party members and the close relationship between the PLA and the party has historically made it difficult for the PLA to act as a discrete interest group in Chinese politics. In serving the party rather than the state, the PLA is embedded within the broader political apparatus and prone to "divisions and cross-cutting cleavages" that preclude the development and expression of institutional interests. At the extremes, the PLA has sometimes taken action consistent with CCP direction against its own organizational interests. If PLA actors are motivated to political action on the basis of other affiliations — party, regional, and/or factional — then there is little payoff in trying to identify PLA institutional interests and means of pursuing them. However, if PLA actors share certain institutional policy objectives and demonstrate the capacity to mobilize and make political demands on that basis, there is value in understanding those interests and how they are expressed in the policy process.

Conceptualizing the PLA as an "Interest Group" in Chinese Politics

An "interest group," in David Truman's authoritative formulation, refers to "a group that, on the basis of one or more shared attitudes, makes certain claims upon other groups in the society for the establishment, maintenance, or enhancement of forms of behavior that are implied as shared attitudes. ... [They also] share attitudes towards what is needed or wanted in a given situation, observable as demands or claims upon other groups in society." In his assessment of the PLA, Garver established two parallel criteria: 1) "when one or several organizational segments have distinct institutionally-derived interests that lead some of its members to political activity to defend and promote those interests against others who hold antithetical views," and 2) "when there is a pattern of political participation by soldiers designed to achieve an authoritative decision in favor of a particular policy." Garver stressed the centrality of "institutionally-derived interests" (italics added), but cautioned that the organization need not be a "unitary, monolithic actor ... [nor] always act as a group." In other words, only some critical mass of PLA personnel acting in concert some of the time is necessary for the interest group label to be analytically useful.

The PLA in 1996 was an unlikely candidate to be labeled an "interest group." Given its allegiance to the CCP rather than the state, its uneven institutionalization, and its formal responsibilities within a restrictive Chinese political system, the Chinese military lacked the coherence, autonomy, and voice usually associated with an interest group. In its various incarnations — as an organization indistinguishable from the party during the pre-1949 era, as shock troops for intraparty factional battles during the Cultural Revolution, as a marginalized appendage with vast private commercial interests during the early reform period, and now as an increasingly modern and professional military organization — the PLA has seldom functioned like interest groups in the American political system or other liberal democracies. Even after several rounds of personnel reductions, the PLA remains large, functionally differentiated, and geographically dispersed — characteristics that dilute the concentrated interests that typically underpin an interest group.

Moreover, powerful political and ideological currents in China restrict the formation and action of interest groups, even if they are in fact latent in society. The party claims to represent the people completely, and formally rejects the liberal idea of autonomous civil actors or groups expressing their interests within the party-state. Nonetheless, such groups do exist in the form of party members who represent the interests of particular segments of Chinese society or pursue the organizational imperatives of particular bureaucratic systems (xitong) or organizations. This phenomenon is viewed unfavorably by the party, which considers it damaging to social harmony. Chinese scholars distinguish the groups prevalent in China from Western interest groups organized along social or economic lines that bring money and political pressure to bear in attempts to influence legislation or policy implementation. In the Chinese case, the most meaningful "interest groups" are state-owned enterprises with monopoly power and strong ties to the regulatory or administrative bodies that affect their interests. Such enterprises are widely viewed as significant obstacles to the CCP's goal of rebalancing the Chinese economy toward a more sustainable economic model, and have been a target of Xi Jinping's anticorrpution campaign. Western scholars have also noted the increased role of private business lobbying in China.

Opportunities for political participation are a necessary condition for interest group formation and efforts to exert influence. These can be formal institutionalized channels (representation and participation in the formal decisionmaking process), informal channels (lobbying of civilian officials responsible for a particular policy or set of policies), or indirect efforts to shape the broader public and policy debate. Some analysts regard the PLA's formal access to institutional channels such as the Central Military Commission (CMC) and seats in the Politburo as problematic because "the embeddedness of the PLA in the dominant system disqualifies it from being called an interest group" and favors an inside access strategy rather than external lobbying. Yet because the PLA is not represented in some decisionmaking bodies that affect its core mission of national defense (e.g., the Politburo Standing Committee), it has incentives to pursue its institutional interests through informal and indirect channels as well.

Can the PLA Have Coherent Institutional Interests?

Arguments that the PLA has been incapable of representing itself as a coherent interest group have focused on its internal dynamics. An overarching "military view" was elusive for much of the PLA's history because the diversity of its sub-units tended to organize military personnel around interests derived from factional, regional, or political imperatives rather than shared institutional goals. However, the PLA's evolution from a heavily politicized revolutionary organization to a modern professional military with specialized missions has helped produce a "military view" evident in the statements, behavior, and institutional imperatives of today's PLA. Two broad trends in civil-military relations have increased the PLA's ability to form and pursue coherent institutional interests: increased military professionalism and bifurcation of PRC civilian and military elites.

Professionalism is a dominant theme in reform-era studies of the PLA, and has sharpened the PLA's sense of its organizational interests and equities. Samuel Huntington describes professionalism in terms of expertise, responsibility, and corporateness. Reflecting a broader trend in Chinese society, expertise is particularly valued in today's PLA. Military leaders are focused on the need to field an army capable of using more sophisticated equipment in the complex joint and informationized operations that characterize modern warfare. Emphasis on a specialized military body of knowledge has produced programs to upgrade the technical skills of soldiers through education and training in science and technology. A better-educated and credentialed officer corps — some recruited from civilian universities and others through military academies — lay claim to unique professional expertise in military affairs. Formal technical training and professional military education reinforce the importance of military expertise.

PLA doctrine and military attitudes convey a heightened sense of the military's special responsibility for national security and for defending China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. This is reinforced by the PLA's professional monopoly on information and knowledge about military affairs, which implies that only the PLA is competent to take responsibility for the military aspects of national security. A firmer sense of corporate identity among senior- and mid-level officers is also evident, contributing to expectations that the PLA will exercise significant autonomy in military affairs and should possess goals, prerogatives, and a culture unique to the organization. Overarching concern with "army-building," for example, is a function of an increasingly corporate view of PLA priorities.

Military professionalism interacts with a second important trend in civil-military relations: the bifurcation of civilian and military elites as the career pathways of military and civilian leaders have diverged in recent years. The first generation of revolutionary leaders were all military men in some capacity, whether as combat commanders or political commissars — or at least as civilians interacting closely with the military during the Chinese civil war. These relationships between civilian and military elites endured well into the postrevolutionary period in the form of a "dual-role elite" whose relationship was characterized by interdependence and symbiotic behavior. By virtue of close bonds and shared experiences, military and civilian leaders intervened freely in affairs outside their formal areas of responsibility. The PLA's central role in the Cultural Revolution is an example of the military's overt forays into civilian politics.

The current generation of Chinese civilian leaders lacks firsthand revolutionary experience and has matured professionally in a much more technocratic and civilian environment. Their education and substantive political experiences have occurred on a separate track from their military counterparts, leading to relatively little substantive interaction between the two groups. Civilian and military leadership have succeeded in their respective fields due to professional skills that do not overlap much. Typically, civilian officials have only limited substantive civil-military interaction until achieving high levels of seniority. President and CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping may represent an important exception to this trend, given his status as the first party secretary since Deng Xiaoping with direct military experience. (Xi served in the PLA for three years, as personal secretary to then-Defense Minister Geng Biao from 1979 to 1982.) The perception that Xi has close military ties and will "augment the military establishment's already formidable clout in foreign policy and other arenas" probably overstates the military's influence, especially given the CCP system of collective leadership. Some PLA officers regard Xi as sympathetic to military interests given his personal and family background, but this experience may instead give him more confidence and leverage in dealing with the PLA.

PLA personnel are incubated in an almost exclusively military environment where emphasis on technical expertise and professional duties leads to distinctive military perspectives on national security policy. Lack of systematic interaction between civil and military people until later stages of their careers may also undermine mutual trust and decrease the PLA's confidence that civilians possess sufficient knowledge and experience in military affairs to craft effective national security policy. This is clearly evident in PLA attitudes toward Foreign Ministry officials. PLA officers consistently proclaim their loyalty to the Communist Party, but the authors' interactions with Chinese military officers reinforce the impression that they believe their special responsibility for China's national security distinguishes them from civilians. This sense of mission contributes to a strong sense of corporate identity that facilitates acting as a coherent interest group.

Writing in the mid-1990s, Garver could not have fully anticipated the developments noted above. His essay furnishes a useful set of criteria with which to evaluate those developments and reassess his conclusions. Garver detailed eight sources of competing or divergent interests within the PLA that limited its capacity to act as a coherent interest group:

• Combat-oriented group armies vs. commercially oriented garrison units

• Emergent blue-water navy vs. ground forces

• Military Regions (with close linkages with provincial elites and central authorities)

• Senior officers with differing old field army affiliations

• National Defense University (NDU) graduates vs. non-graduates

• Officers with higher education or academy training vs. non-educated officers

• Different patronage cliques

• Patron-client relations, factional alignments, and policy differences that create venues for PLA sub-group linkages with non-PLA/civilian groups

Only three of these factors (competition between the navy and ground forces, patronage ties within the PLA, and links between PLA sub-groups and civilian counterparts) remain clearly meaningful today. Tensions between combat-oriented group armies and commercially oriented garrison units are less divisive because of the general decline in PLA commercial activity following forced divestiture of PLA businesses in 1998. Military Region (MR) leaders were thought to build close ties with provincial elites and to prize contacts with central authorities responsible for their welfare. Senior officers in MRs probably do cultivate ties with provincial leaders, but increased rotation of both civilian and military leaders who are candidates for top positions likely decreases the strength of these ties, as does the fact that military regions now receive more direct funding from the central government budget and are less dependent on financial support from provincial and local officials. MR and local-unit leaders do need support from civilian officials in the context of mobilization plans and exercises. This requirement promotes greater civil-military interaction, but is probably a source of tension as military leaders try to persuade civilian officials to devote resources to military support rather than economic development.